High-resolution images from the James Webb Space Telescope have revealed an asteroid belt and an enormous cloud of dust and rubble surrounding one of the nearest and brightest stars in the night sky. The images clearly show two rings of debris circling Fomalhaut, a star that lies 25 light years from Earth in Piscis Austrinus, a constellation in the southern celestial hemisphere. Previous observations of the same star by the Hubble Space Telescope and another instruments have showed it to be ringed by dust and debris, but the images from these observations gave only a partial picture.

10th May 2023
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Astronomers say the dust clouds that surround Fomalhaut were produced as a result of multiple collisions between planetesimals, large rocky objects several kilometres across that, in some cases, go on to form planets. Known as debris discs, they are similar to protoplanetary discs—like the one from which our own Solar System originated—but contain very little gas.

Further out still from Fomalhaut lies a third belt, an outer ring (or "halo") of debris that resembles our Solar System’s Kuiper Belt, home to Pluto and the other dwarf planets, Eris, Haumea and Makemake.
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The images were taken by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which gathers data in the mid-infrared range of the electromagnetic spectrum.

​​​​​​​The three belts and the gaps between them suggest that unseen planets are circling Fomalhaut: they have "cleared" their orbits of dust and rocks by attracting the material on to their surfaces by the force of gravity.