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| Left: A false-color view from the Hubble Space Telescope reveals a 100-billion-mile-wide disk of dust around the star Vega. Hubble detects reflected light from smoke-sized particles forming a smooth halo on the disk’s periphery, with no large planets evident. The central black spot obscures the star’s bright glow. Right: The James Webb Space Telescope captures the warm glow of dust in a disk halo, extending from 7 billion to 15 billion miles, analogous to the solar system’s Kuiper Belt. The inner disk, closer to the star, shows a notable dip in brightness between 3.7 and 7.2 billion miles. The black spot at the center results from data saturation. |
In the 1997 film “Contact,” adapted from Carl Sagan’s novel, scientist Ellie Arroway, played by Jodie Foster, journeys through a wormhole to the star Vega, emerging in a swirling debris disk devoid of visible planets. Recent observations by astronomers at the University of Arizona have shown that this cinematic vision aligns closely with reality.
Using NASA’s Hubble and James Webb space telescopes, the researchers conducted an unprecedented examination of the Vega debris disk, which spans nearly 100 billion miles in diameter. According to Andras Gáspár, a team member, “The Vega disk is smooth, ridiculously smooth,” making it a unique system compared to other circumstellar disks.
A significant revelation from their research is the absence of large planets within the disk, which challenges existing theories about the variety of exoplanet systems. Kate Su, lead author of the study, emphasized that these findings prompt a reevaluation of our understanding of planetary formation.
The James Webb Space Telescope detected the infrared glow from sand-sized particles orbiting the blue-white star, which is 40 times brighter than our Sun. Meanwhile, Hubble captured an outer halo of finer particles reflecting starlight, suggesting a complex interplay of dust and debris.
The disk’s structure is notably layered, with smaller grains pushed outward by starlight more rapidly than larger ones. Schuyler Wolff, lead author of the Hubble findings, explained that this sorting of dust particle sizes could illuminate the dynamics of circumstellar disks.
While the Vega disk contains a subtle gap around 60 AU from the star—approximately twice the distance of Neptune from the Sun—its overall smoothness indicates a lack of Neptune-mass planets in wide orbits, unlike our solar system. Su noted that these observations enhance our understanding of disk diversity and its implications for planetary systems.
The formation of circumstellar disks occurs when newly forming stars accrete material from a dust and gas disk, remnants of the cloud from which they originated. Vega, being about 450 million years old, has a dusty disk enriched by ongoing collisions among asteroids and debris from evaporating comets.
In contrast, nearby star Fomalhaut, similar in distance, age, and temperature to Vega, displays a more complex structure with three nested debris belts, possibly due to shepherding planets that constrain the dust. George Rieke, a team member, questioned why Fomalhaut has formed planets while Vega has not, given the similar physical environments.
Historically, Vega has been significant in the search for planetary formation. It was the first star from which evidence of orbiting material was observed, with hypotheses dating back to Immanuel Kant in 1775. The first observational evidence emerged in 1984, with the detection of warm dust by NASA’s IRAS. Subsequent studies by the Spitzer Space Telescope and other facilities confirmed the presence of dust rings, but it was only with the detailed observations from Hubble and Webb that new insights emerged.
The findings from this research, to be published in The Astrophysical Journal, underscore the importance of the James Webb Space Telescope in unraveling the mysteries of our universe. Webb continues to push the boundaries of astronomical research, providing a clearer understanding of circumstellar disks and their implications for planetary formation.
Overall, these discoveries not only shed light on Vega but also challenge our understanding of how diverse planetary systems can be, revealing that many questions about planet formation remain unanswered.