Jamie Carter is an award-winning reporter and experienced stargazer who covers the night sky, astro-tourism, the northern lights and space exploration. He received the 2023 Popular Media Award from the American Astronomical Society's Solar Physics Division and is the author of A Stargazing Program for Beginners. Writing for Forbes.
There is no evidence of giant planets around Vega, one of the brightest, most famous and most important stars in the night sky, according to new research. Using the Hubble and James Webb Space Telescopes, a team of astronomers at the University of Arizona, Tucson, studied a disk of debris about 100 billion miles in diameter around the iconic star. They discovered a perfect circle, with no disruptions, meaning no planets. For astronomers, that’s hugely puzzling.
However, the smoothness of Vega’s disk is confusing to astronomers because it means the make-up of its system is different from the solar system. “It’s making us rethink the range and variety among exoplanet systems,” said Kate Su of the University of Arizona, lead author of a paper presenting the Webb findingsInstrument . It reveals three nested belts extending out to 14 billion miles from the star. The inner belts – which had never been seen before – were revealed by Webb for the first time.
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