Astronomers studying the star's spectra found that the disk around it is warm but dry, which means it displays very weak water signals.

'In August 2022, Webb imaged a distant star GW Lup in a cluster of stars and gas called Lupus 1. Follow us (opens in new tab), or on Facebook (opens in new tab) and Instagram (opens in new tab). 'Instead, most of the water may be locked up in icy pebbles of the colder outer disk, not traceable by these observations,' astronomers said in Thursday's statement.įollow Sharmila Kuthunur (opens in new tab). Water, however, was not detected in Webb's data on J160532. For example, in our solar system, Saturn's largest moon Titan occasionally features methane rains. If the latter turns out to be the case, it will be an exciting find because methane-rich worlds would have a possibility of manifesting in the star system. Other carbon-rich molecules spotted around the star include the first detections of benzene and possibly methane, astronomers say. Why do some James Webb Space Telescope images show warped and repeated galaxies?Ī different study that interpreted the spectra of another distant star called J160532 found its surrounding disk to be unexpectedly rich in hydrogen-carbon compounds, the strongest of which are hot acetylene molecules. Merging galaxies shine with the light of a trillion suns in gorgeous James Webb Space Telescope photo James Webb Space Telescope faces sensor glitch in deep space The molecule's presence indicates that there is abundant carbon dioxide hidden deep inside the disk that Webb can't see yet, the authors wrote in their study (opens in new tab). Grant's team for the first time detected a rare and slightly heavier version of carbon dioxide in a star's disk. 'While we clearly detected molecules containing carbon and oxygen, there is much less water present than expected,' Sierra Grant, a postdoc at the Max Planck Institute for extraterrestrial Physics in Germany and the lead author of one of the latest studies, said in a statement (opens in new tab). In August 2022, Webb imaged a distant star GW Lup in a cluster of stars and gas called Lupus 1. A dry disk of gas and dust with a rare type of carbon dioxide The team also detected 'a forest of emission lines' in the star's spectra corresponding to carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide and clear signals of water, according to the study. Astronomers say these frozen compounds will likely be embedded in newborn planets and comets. So the crystals are now close to the star's snow line - the point in its system where temperatures are cool enough for ice and snow to first form. When astronomers finally studied EX Lup once again in 2022 using Webb, they rediscovered the silicate crystals, but in those 15 years the crystals had flowed outward to about 279 million miles (450 million km) or three times the distance between the sun and Earth, according to the latest study (opens in new tab). 'However, for the past 15 years, astronomers did not have an instrument sensitive enough to detect the tenuous signal of the slowly cooling crystals,' according to a statement (opens in new tab) published in March. This in turn triggered the formation of intriguing crystalline silicates - specifically forsterite or white olivine - within 93 million miles (150 million km), or the distance between the sun and Earth. According to the researchers, these irregular events likely played a role in hosting ' embryos of comets and planets' that they think are present in the star’s disk.ĮX Lup last erupted in 2008, which was also its most powerful outburst, during which it heated the surrounding ring of gas and dust. Since the star’s first detectable eruption in 1901, it has flared up seven times in the past. One of Webb's targets was EX Lup, a star in the Lupus cloud over 500 light-years away from Earth.

Synkron disk space full