Star Fomalhaut has dusty little secret – two more debris belts and a potential planetary party

The James Webb Space Telescope is stirring up more space mysteries with the discovery of an additional pair of debris belts around a young nearby star long believed to have only one. As opposed to having just one dusty ring roughly twice the size of the solar system's Kuiper Belt around it, JWST used the Mid-Infrared …

[Anonymous Coward]

Euros or Dollars?

“ The "planet" disappeared in 2014, and astronomers now believe what they saw was more likely to be a collision between two planetesimals that has since disbursed. “

I believe “dispersed” is the word you’re looking for.

[steelpillow]

Fomalahaut V

Somebody has to be first....

[Rich 11]

Missing inaction

But have they found the fire vampires yet?

[TVU]

This solar system is not going to end happily. That star is twice the mass of the Sun and it has perhaps half a billion years before it will die so life will not have any time to evolve on any planet orbiting around that star.

[HelpfulJohn]

Star system, stellar system or planetary system.

There is only one Solar System and most of us are in it. Most of the time.

[HelpfulJohn]

If a Fomahautian planet gets to be solid, with a reasonable gravity and atmospher and it orbits far enough from the star, it could be used

for several tens of millions of years by a wandering, technological culture before the star cooks it.

Falling rocks and icy blobs could be equally useful, if not more so, assuming Fomalhaut keeps some around.

Even short-lived stars live a very, very long time on our timescales.

[anonymous boring coward]

"The trio of debris belts around Fomalhaut, with detail of a supposed exoplanet"

What's the black thing in the middle, that looks like a Photoshop mistake?

[HelpfulJohn]

The blackness is the blacked-out star.

Stars are *very* bright, even in infra-red and that one would overwhelm the light from the dust clouds. To see how bright a star can be, see Sol

from Earth's equator in Summer.

It is possible to make a composite of the dust cloud and the central star using digital jiggery-pokery but there is no reason to do it here.