JWST searches for planets in the Fomalhaut system

The Fomalhaut system is nearby in astronomical terms, and it's also one of the brightest stars in the night sky. That means astronomers have studied it intensely over the years. Now that we have the powerful James Webb Space ...

JWST looks at the debris disk around a white dwarf

Debris disks are quite common in the universe. Young stars have protoplanetary disks from which planets form. Black holes have accretion disks that are the source of the galactic jets. Supernova remnants can form a disk around ...

White dwarf stars' debris disk formation delayed

White dwarfs, the glowing cores of dead stars, often host disks of dusty debris. However, these debris disks only appear 10 to 20 millions of years following the star's violent Red Giant phase. A new paper by Planetary Science ...

Massive gas disk raises questions about planet formation theory

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) found a young star surrounded by an astonishing mass of gas. The star, called 49 Ceti, is 40 million years old and conventional theories of planet ...

Giant exoplanet hunters: Look for debris disks

There's no map showing all the billions of exoplanets hiding in our galaxy—they're so distant and faint compared to their stars, it's hard to find them. Now, astronomers hunting for new worlds have established a possible ...

ALMA eyes icy ring around young planetary system

An international team of astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) has made the first complete millimeter-wavelength image of the ring of dusty debris surrounding the young star Fomalhaut. ...

Collisions generate gas in debris disks

By examining the atomic carbon line from two young star systems—49 Ceti and Beta Pictoris—researchers had found atomic carbon in the disk, the first time this observation has been made at sub-millimeter wavelength, hinting ...

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