In the 1997 movieContact , Dr Ellie Arroway , played by the excellent Jodie Foster , travels via a wormhole past Vega , evidence a organization with no planets but lots of debris . Hollywood might have have that completely right – it seems that Vega is not building any planets like other hotshot .
The star is one of the brightest in the Northern Hemisphere . It was for a time , and will be again , theNorth Star , once the terminal has precess aside from Polaris . It is more than twice as massive as the Sun but it is a lot younger , around 500 million year old . It is so young , in fact , that it is still surrounded by a phonograph recording of material know as a protoplanetary saucer . That ’s where planet form . At least , ordinarily .
It seems that Vega is not a planet - producing machine . Other protoplanetary disc boast dark bands where planet are form . The fledgling major planet act like a snowplow , wholesale dust and gasoline in their field . The Vega disk stretching for 160 billion km ( 100 million mi ) and it is as legato as you may get , bar a potential opening far from the headliner .
“ It ’s a mysterious organization because it ’s unlike other circumstellar disks we ’ve looked at , " Andras Gáspár of the University of Arizona , a appendage of the research squad , said in astatement . " The Vega disk is smooth , ridiculously smooth . "
" It ’s make us rethink the range and variety among exoplanet systems , " added lead author Kate Su , also from the University of Arizona .
It took the combined power of Hubble andJWSTto infer exactly how the material in this disk is distributed . The starlight from Vega has push away all the smoke - sized particle seen by Hubble further away , while JWST sees the dust grains as hunky-dory as sand , closer to the far-famed star .
" Different types of physics will locate unlike - sized particle at different locating , " explained Schuyler Wolff of the University of Arizona team , lead author of the paper exhibit the Hubble findings . " The fact that we ’re seeing rubble speck sizes class out can help us interpret the underlying dynamics in circumstellar disks . "
There is a subtle sign at 60 astronomical unit from the star – that ’s about double as far asNeptuneis from the Sun . It is potential a col , potentially bespeak one singular infant planet . If it is the case , we are see a singular organisation with no planets forming anywhere close to the star .
" We ’re go through in item how much miscellany there is among circumstellar disk , and how that variety is bond into the underlying planetary systems . We ’re finding a lot out about the planetary systems – even when we ca n’t see what might be veil planets , " sum up Su . " There ’s still a bunch of unknown in the planet - formation procedure , and I think these Modern observations of Vega are going to help constrain models of major planet formation . "
The disk is particularly striking when compared to another star calledFomalhaut . It ’s at the same age , temperature , and distance ( 25 light - years ) as Vega , but JWST has show the hallmarks of satellite - building around Fomalhaut . Why is Vega different ? This stay a major undefendable question that will require further study .
Two papers describe the results will be bring out inThe Astrophysical Journal , and are availablehereandhere .
