Astronomers have obtained images of dozens of belts around nearby stars. They consist of comets and tiny icy pebbles.
The discovery was made as part of the REASONS (REsolved ALMA and SMA Observations of Nearby Stars) program, which involves the Submillimeter Array (SMA) (8 radio telescopes) and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) (66 radio telescopes). The astronomers’ target was the neighborhood of stars close to the Sun with different ages: from recently formed to those that are already several billion years old. They were interested in analogs of the Kuiper belt, which is located beyond the orbit of Neptune. According to some scientists in the distant past, its comets were the source of water for the interior of the Solar System and Earth.
The observations were successful. In total, the researchers were able to detect 74 belts filled with large icy objects (exocomets) as well as small pebbles that are formed during collisions between them.
The images obtained by ALMA and SMA show the amazing diversity of the structure of cometary belts. Some are narrow rings, while others are wider and should rather be classified as disks.
Moreover, some of the 74 systems studied have more than one ring or disk at a time. And some of them are “eccentric”, that is, they have not a circular orbit but rather an oval one. This suggests the presence of still undiscovered planets or possibly moons whose gravity affects the distribution of objects in these systems.
The findings are important because they can shed light on the evolution of our Solar System. They will also be used to prepare new observations in other wavelength ranges, which will involve both the James Webb Telescope and the next generation of telescopes, which will be operational in the coming years.
Earlier we reported on how huge asteroids collided in the Beta Pictoris star system.
According to Phys.org
