Home · Science · Oct 1 archive
NASA's Webb Reveals Details of Extreme Debris Disks
Developing
In Short: NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has compiled a sample of 21 extreme debris disks, including five from Spitzer’s archival data and 16 from Webb, with 12 newly observed disks and follow-up observations on four of Spitzer’s.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has compiled a sample of 21 extreme debris disks, including five from Spitzer’s archival data and 16 from Webb, with 12 newly observed disks and follow-up observations on four of Spitzer’s.
Agnes Kospal of Konkoly Observatory in Budapest, Hungary, and a coauthor of the study, said, “To just see their mid-infrared emission and beautiful spectral features with Webb, which allowed us to identify their compositions, was the most exciting thing for me.”
Astronomers have used NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine a class of young stellar systems that show signs of similar upheavals, providing clues to the amount of energy in their collisions.
Systems like II Zw 096 show us how powerful galaxy collisions shaped the early universe.
Chandra X-ray data (magenta) pinpoint powerful black hole activity and hot gas, while optical data (blue and white) from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope illuminate vast stellar nurseries hidden behind interstellar dust.
Background
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has provided new insights into extreme debris disks, revealing smaller dust grains and irregular brightness variations.
What's still developing
- The team confirmed that extreme debris disks share three key properties: smaller dust grains than those in protoplanetary or classic debris disks, a high concentration of warm dust, and irregular brightness variations, all revealed by mid-infrared spectra from Webb and Spitzer.
- The remaining two-thirds of their sample is silica-poor, indicating that the collisions are occurring on smaller scales, like grazing, between Moon-sized objects.
- A team of astronomers led by Kate Su of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado investigated these intriguing objects with Webb.
- Home » Science » James Webb Space Telescope Captures Stunning Panorama of Star-Forming Nebula IC 348 A stunning new panorama from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has unveiled detailed observations of IC 348, a star-forming reflection nebula located approximately 1,000 light-years away in the constellation Perseus.
- Some of that material coalesced into the Moon, where NASA’s Artemis program is returning humans, preparing for Mars, and shaping the future of space exploration.
- During its mission lifetime, NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope examined the debris disk stage and discovered a subclass termed extreme debris disks.