At a distance of about 25 light years from Earth astronaut has discovered the small exoplanet called Fomalhaut B. This was one of the first exoplanets discovered in visible light by Hubble space telescope, and the astronaut noticed it two time one in 2004 and 2006. At first Fomalhaut B appeared as a bright, cool dot moving briskly across the sky. But, now it is disappeared. what happened to Fomalhaut B ?
A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) proposes a solution to the "Mystery of the Disappearing Exoplanet".
Fomalhaut B is a exoplanet which is never consider as a planet, when it was first discovered in 2004, it was a actually a colossal of icy debris created by a recent, violent collision between two planetary fragments.
This collision was expected to took place in a icy ring of debris in our solar system similar to Kuiper belt or oort cloud.
And this collision must have occurred very shortly before Hubble caught its sights on to it. when the expanding cloud of post-collision dust particles was still densely concentrated and apparent in visible light, the researchers wrote. By 2014, that cloud had already grown large and diffuse enough to disappear from view, the idea goes.
For the new study, Gaspar and his colleagues reviewed nearly two decades of archival Hubble observations, which revealed Fomalhaut b slowly growing dimmer and dimmer before completely vanishing in 2014. Using computer models, the researchers calculated that a collision between two icy bodies roughly 125 miles (200 kilometers) in diameter could have created a dust cloud that matched the Hubble observations.
The hypothesis called dust-cloud-in-disguise, also explains such unusual behavior of exoplanets. For a little exoplanet located at far distant region in solar system is not so bright, and for distant exoplanets, which are often too small to reflect a noticeable amount of light from their home star. But Fomalhaut brightness, which allowed Hubble scientists to see it clearly in visible light, is highly unusual. Fomalhaut b showed no infrared light signature, meaning it was extremely cold again, highly unusual for a young planet, which should be warm enough to emit some infrared radiation, the study authors said.
So, Fomalhaut b is actually a debris of two icy asteroids that met a cataclysmic end. The debris cloud is expanding significantly and its diameter is greater then the Earth's orbits around the sun.
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| NASA, ESA, P. Kalas, J. Graham, E. Chiang, E. Kite (University of California, Berkeley), M. Clampin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center), M. Fitzgerald (Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory), and K. Stapelfeldt and J. Krist (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory) |
A new study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) proposes a solution to the "Mystery of the Disappearing Exoplanet".
Fomalhaut B is a exoplanet which is never consider as a planet, when it was first discovered in 2004, it was a actually a colossal of icy debris created by a recent, violent collision between two planetary fragments.
And this collision must have occurred very shortly before Hubble caught its sights on to it. when the expanding cloud of post-collision dust particles was still densely concentrated and apparent in visible light, the researchers wrote. By 2014, that cloud had already grown large and diffuse enough to disappear from view, the idea goes.
This larger icy post collision debris was mistakenly identified as Fomalbaut B. "These collisions are exceedingly rare and so this is a big deal that we actually get to see evidence of one," said Gaspar, an assistant astronomer at the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory. "We believe that we were at the right place at the right time to have witnessed such an unlikely event with NASA's Hubble Space Telescope."
For the new study, Gaspar and his colleagues reviewed nearly two decades of archival Hubble observations, which revealed Fomalhaut b slowly growing dimmer and dimmer before completely vanishing in 2014. Using computer models, the researchers calculated that a collision between two icy bodies roughly 125 miles (200 kilometers) in diameter could have created a dust cloud that matched the Hubble observations.
The hypothesis called dust-cloud-in-disguise, also explains such unusual behavior of exoplanets. For a little exoplanet located at far distant region in solar system is not so bright, and for distant exoplanets, which are often too small to reflect a noticeable amount of light from their home star. But Fomalhaut brightness, which allowed Hubble scientists to see it clearly in visible light, is highly unusual. Fomalhaut b showed no infrared light signature, meaning it was extremely cold again, highly unusual for a young planet, which should be warm enough to emit some infrared radiation, the study authors said.
So, Fomalhaut b is actually a debris of two icy asteroids that met a cataclysmic end. The debris cloud is expanding significantly and its diameter is greater then the Earth's orbits around the sun.
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