A disk of dusty debris around the AU Mic, a red dwarf (masked). The two images were taken using different wavelengths
NASA, ESA, CSA, Kellen Lawson, Joshua E. Schroeder, Alyssa Pagan
The red dwarf AU Microscopii (AU Mic) is surrounded by debris left over from the process of planet formation. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has taken pictures of its fragmentary disk in unprecedented detail. This helps us understand how planetary systems around small stars evolve.
About 32 light-years from Earth, AU Mic has two known exoplanets. One is about 10 times the mass of Earth and the other is twice the mass of her on Earth. In both, Mercury is closer to a smaller star than the Sun.
Beyond the orbit of these two worlds, the situation for the AU Mic system is chaotic. Since AU Mic is relatively new, about 23 million years old, the system also contains a lot of remnants of planetary building blocks. These so-called planetesimals collide with each other to form giant disks of dust and rock. By blocking out the intense light from the star itself, JWST captured this disk in greater detail than ever before. The star-shaped graphic in the image represents the position of the AU microphone, and the dotted line is the area where the JWST blocks light.
“This system has a known exoplanet and a debris disk close enough and bright enough to be studied comprehensively using Webb’s own powerful instruments,” said Josh Shrieder of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. “It’s one of the few examples of a young star that’s matured.” The head of the team that took the image, statement.
“The first data we saw was much better than we expected. It was more detailed than we expected. It was brighter than we expected. We detected the disk closer than we expected. Digging deeper. As we go, we hope to find more surprises that we didn’t expect,” said Schroeder.
A deeper study of this image and others planned will help researchers study the evolution of planetary systems, but they will not be able to directly observe relatively small, distant planets. There is also a more ambitious goal of These are very difficult to find any other way, but with JWST you might find them.
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topic:
- planetary system/
- james webb space telescope
