北落师门的尘埃碎片盘
(原标题: Fomalhaut's Dusty Debris Disk)
2023-05-11
浏览次数: 13
北落师门是一颗明亮的恒星，距离地球25光年，位于南双鱼座方向。天文学家在20世纪80年代首次注意到北落师门过量的红外辐射。太空望远镜和地面望远镜已经确定了红外辐射的来源是一片尘埃碎片，这是围绕这颗炙热的年轻恒星的行星系统的证据。但这张来自詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜的MIRI相机的清晰红外图像揭示了北落师门碎片盘从未见过的细节，包括外环上的一大片尘埃云，这可能是天体碰撞的证据，以及内部的尘埃盘和间隙，可能是由嵌入但看不见的行星形成和维持的。左下方出现了一个以au或天文单位表示的图像比例尺，即地球与太阳的平均距离。北落师门的外星周尘埃环距离我们太阳系柯伊伯带的两倍，柯伊伯带是海王星轨道之外的小冰体和碎片。
查看原文解释
Fomalhaut is a bright star, a 25 light-year voyage from planet Earth in the direction of the constellation Piscis Austrinus. Astronomers first noticed Fomalhaut's excess infrared emission in the 1980s. Space and ground-based telescopes have since identified the infrared emission's source as a disk of dusty debris, evidence for a planetary system surrounding the hot, young star. But this sharp infrared image from the James Webb Space Telescope's MIRI camera reveals details of Fomalhaut's debris disk never before seen, including a large dust cloud in the outer ring that is possible evidence for colliding bodies, and an inner dust disk and gap likely shaped and maintained by embedded but unseen planets. An image scale bar in au or astronomical units, the average Earth-Sun distance, appears at the lower left. Fomalhaut's outer circumstellar dust ring lies at about twice the distance of our own Solar System's Kuiper Belt of small icy bodies and debris beyond the orbit of Neptune.