NASA’s James Webb telescope has captured a previously unobserved image of a dusty disk around a red dwarf star. Know more details.
NASA’s most expensive telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope has once again wowed scientists by capturing never-before-seen images of the deep universe. Once again, the Webb Telescope has clicked into the inner workings of a dusty disk surrounding a nearby red dwarf star. NASA says these are the first observations ever. New images shared by the Webb Telescope provide clues to the disc’s composition.
“A disk of debris is continuously replenished by the collisions of planets. By studying it, we get a unique window into the recent kinetic history of this system,” says Kellen Lawson of NASA’s Goddard Spatial Flight Center, lead author of the AU Mic star study, said in a blog. This star system is also believed to be one of the very few examples of a young star, with known exoplanets. This near and bright debris disk is sufficient to study as a whole using the Telescope’s unique powerful instruments, said Josh Schliede, principal investigator for NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. James Webb.
This star system, called AU Microscopii or AU Mic, is located 32 light-years away in the southern constellation of Microscopium, which is approximately 23 million years old. This means that planet formation is over as it usually takes less than 10 million years. This star has two known planets, while the dusty debris disk is the result of collisions between the remaining planets.
The Technology Behind the Dusty Disk Near the Red Dwarf
The team used the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to study this AU Mic star system. NASA said, “With the help of NIRCam’s corona, which blocks the intense light of the central star, they were able to study the region very close to the star.” This NIRCam by Webb telescope allowing researchers to track the disk closest to the star by 5 astronomical units or 460 million miles, equivalent to the orbit of Jupiter in our solar system.
