Image by WikiImages from Pixabay
Image by WikiImages from Pixabay

James Webb Telescope detects planet forming ingredients in a neighbouring galaxy

Embargoed until: Publicly released:
Peer-reviewed: This work was reviewed and scrutinised by relevant independent experts.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has detected planet-forming ingredients around hundreds of young stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a dwarf galaxy neighbouring the Milky Way, according to international researchers. The team used infrared imaging from the JWST and detected the thermal radiation emitted from warm dust orbiting close to young stars, which they say are likely to form planets. The team say that their findings aid our understanding of whether planets can form efficiently in galaxies that are poorer in such materials than the Milky Way.

Journal/conference: Nature Astronomy

Research: Paper

Organisation/s: Royal Observatory, UK

Funder: This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract no. NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with program no. 1227. O.C.J. acknowledges support from a Science and Technology Facilities Council Webb fellowship. K.F. acknowledges support through the ESA Research Fellowship. M.M. acknowledges support through a NASA/JWST grant no. 80NSSC22K0025. M.M., N.H. and L.L. acknowledge support from the National Science Foundation through grant no. 2054178. L.E.U.C. was supported by an appointment to the NASA Postdoctoral Program at the NASA Ames Research Center, administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities under contract with NASA. O.N. acknowledges support from STScI Director’s Discretionary Fund.

Media release

From: Springer Nature

Astronomy: JWST finds planetary ingredients in stellar nursery

The detection of planet-forming ingredients around hundreds of young stars in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a dwarf galaxy neighbouring the Milky Way, is presented in a paper published in Nature Astronomy. The findings are based on data from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and aid our understanding of whether planets can form efficiently in galaxies that are poorer in such materials than the Milky Way.

Planets start off as microscopic grains of sand- or soot-like dust. Over time, dust grains stick together, forming pebbles; pebbles conglomerate to form rocky planetesimals; and planetesimals gently collide to create planetary cores. However, the raw materials to form dust — elements such as silicon, magnesium, aluminium, and iron — are in comparatively low supply in the SMC.

Using infrared imaging from the JWST, which can detect thermal radiation emitted from warm dust, Olivia Jones and colleagues observed hundreds of young low-mass stars (stars younger and less massive than our Sun) in a star-forming region of the SMC called NGC 346. The authors detected signs of dust orbiting close to the young stars, implying that planets should form as these young stars mature.

They indicate that the abundance of rock-forming elements in the SMC is similar to that of galaxies much further away, at a redshift of about 2 — a period in the history of the Universe about 11 to 12 billion years ago that astronomers call ‘cosmic noon’. Given that planet formation is likely in the SMC, the authors infer that planets may have been able to form during this time period and thereafter.

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