James Webb Space Telescope Discovery

Webb Study Reveals Rocky Planets Can Form in Extreme Environments

This is an artist’s impression of a young star surrounded by a protoplanetary disc in which planets are forming. An international team of astronomers have used the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope to provide the first observation of water and other molecules in the inner, rocky-planet-forming regions of a disc in one of the most extreme environments in our galaxy. These results suggest that the conditions for rocky-planet formation, typically found in the discs of low-mass star-forming regions, can also occur in massive-star-forming regions and possibly a broader range of environments. Credit: ESO/L. Calçada Artist’s impression of protoplanetary disc
This graphic presents some of the first results from the eXtreme UV Environments (XUE) James Webb Space Telescope programme. These results suggest that the conditions for rocky-planet formation, typically found in the discs of low-mass star-forming regions, can also occur in massive-star-forming regions and possibly a broader range of environments. Astronomers focussed on rocky-planet-forming regions of discs in the Lobster Nebula using Webb’s Medium Resolution Spectrometer (MRS) of the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). This first result focuses on the protoplanetary disc termed XUE 1, which is located in the star cluster Pismis 24. The inner disc around XUE 1 revealed signatures of water (highlighted here in blue and centred around 14.2 microns), as well as acetylene (C2H2, highlighted in green; centred around 13.7 microns), hydrogen cyanide (HCN, highlighted in brown; centred around 14.0 microns), and carbon dioxide (CO2, highlighted in red; centred around 14.95 microns). As indicated, some of the emission detected was weaker than some of the predicted models, which might imply a small outer disc radius. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted (STScI), M. C Ramírez-Tannus (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy) Protoplanetary disc XUE 1 (MIRI emission spectrum: 13.3–15.5 microns)
This graphic presents some of the first results from the eXtreme UV Environments (XUE) James Webb Space Telescope programme. These results suggest that the conditions for rocky-planet formation, typically found in the discs of low-mass star-forming regions, can also occur in massive-star-forming regions and possibly a broader range of environments. Astronomers focussed on rocky-planet-forming regions of discs in the Lobster Nebula using Webb’s Medium Resolution Spectrometer (MRS) of the Mid-InfraRed Instrument (MIRI). This first result focuses on the protoplanetary disc termed XUE 1, which is located in the star cluster Pismis 24. This graphic features the observed signatures of carbon monoxide spanning 4.95 to 5.15 microns Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, J. Olmsted (STScI), M. C Ramírez-Tannus (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy) Protoplanetary disc XUE 1 (MIRI emission spectrum: 13.3–15.5 microns)