![]() “We expected only to find tiny, young, baby galaxies at this point in time, but we’ve discovered galaxies as mature as our own in what was previously understood to be the dawn of the universe.” “These objects are way more massive than anyone expected,” said study coauthor Joel Leja, assistant professor of astronomy and astrophysics at Penn State University, in a statement. The discovery is completely upending existing theories about the origins of galaxies, according to a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature. ![]() The space observatory revealed six massive galaxies that existed between 500 million and 700 million years after the big bang that created the universe. Studying the dust belts can help unlock more of the secrets behind how planetary systems form.Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to peer back in time to the early days of the universe - and they spotted something unexpected. ![]() Inside the belts, objects like asteroids crash into one another and create more debris and dust. Once the planets form around a star, debris belts form and become shaped by the gravity of the planets. The idea of the disk originated from astronomers Immanuel Kant and Pierre-Simon Laplace in the late 18th century. Stars form from gas and dust, and then a ring of leftover material called a protoplanetary disk orbits the star, where planets are born. The cloud is separate from another feature spied by Hubble in 2008 that might have been a planet - but further observations showed the object disappeared by 2014, implying another collision that left only dust in its wake. Webb also observed a feature Gáspár calls "the great dust cloud," where two celestial bodies might have collided in the outer ring. "By looking at the patterns in these rings, we can actually start to make a little sketch of what a planetary system ought to look like - if we could actually take a deep enough picture to see the suspected planets."ĪLSO SEE: NASA releases new images from Webb telescope showing 'Stephan's Quintet,' 'Cosmic Cliffs,' moreĬombining Webb's new observation along with images taken previously by Hubble, the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array of telescopes can provide scientists with a more detailed view of how belts of debris form around stars. "I would describe Fomalhaut as the archetype of debris discs found elsewhere in our galaxy, because it has components similar to those we have in our own planetary system," said lead study author András Gáspár, assistant research professor of astronomy at the University of Arizona in Tucson, in a statement. Then, the dust was shaped into belts by the gravitational influence of what the researchers believe are unseen planets that orbit the star, the same way Jupiter and Neptune shape our asteroid belt and the inner edge of the Kuiper Belt. Webb's new view revealed Fomalhaut's two inner belts for the first time, which didn't appear in previous images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope or other observatories.įomalhaut's massive dust belts were likely created from the debris left behind as larger bodies such as asteroids and comets collided. ![]() RELATED: James Webb Telescope inspects spiral galaxies, revealing never-before-seen details of star formation But the Webb researchers weren't expecting to see three nested rings of dust extending out 14 billion miles (23 billion kilometers) from the star - or 150 times the distance of Earth from the sun. The dusty disk around Fomalhaut was initially discovered in 1983 using NASA's Infrared Astronomical Satellite. The space observatory focused on the warm dust that encircles Fomalhaut, a young, bright star located 25 light-years from Earth in the Piscis Austrinus constellation, CNN reported. ![]() Astronomers unveiled some cosmic surprises using the James Webb Telescope.Īstronomers used the James Webb Space Telescope to observe the first asteroid belt seen outside of our solar system and unveiled some cosmic surprises along the way. ![]()
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