JWST has taken astonishing images of debris orbiting a nearby star

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed a glowing disk of debris left over from planet formation around a nearby star called AU Microscopii.

To Leah Crane

The red dwarf AU Microscopii, or AU Mic, is surrounded by debris from the planet formation process. The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has photographed the debris disk in unprecedented detail. This helps us understand how planetary systems around small stars evolve.

At AU Mic, which is about 32 light-years from Earth, there are two known exoplanets with masses about 10 times that of Earth and two times that. Both are closer to smaller stars than Mercury is to the Sun.

Beyond the orbit of the two worlds, things are chaotic within the AU Mic system. AU Mic is relatively young at about 23 million years old, so the system is full of remnant planetary components. These so-called planetesimals collide with each other, creating giant disks of dust and rock. By blocking out the intense light from the star itself, JWST captured this disk in unprecedented detail. The graphical star in the image represents the position of the AU microphone and the dotted line is the area where the JWST blocks the light.

“This system is one of the few examples of a young star with a known exoplanet, and has been studied holistically using Webb’s unique and powerful instrument,” said Josh Schlieder of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. It’s a debris disk that’s close enough and bright enough to do so, the head of the team that took the image said in a statement.

“When I first saw the data, it was much better than I expected. It was more detailed than I expected. It was brighter than I expected. We expect to see even more unexpected surprises in the future,” said Schlieder.

A deeper study of this image and others planned will help researchers study the evolution of planetary systems, but they also have more ambitious goals. It is the direct observation of planets that are relatively small and far away from the star. These are very hard to find otherwise, but JWST may be able to find them.

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