NASA: found icy water in a young stellar system
Researchers have confirmed the presence of crystalline ice on a disc of fragments around a sun -like star, 155 light -years away, using detailed data known as spectacles from NASA’s James WebB space telescope.
In 2008, data from the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope hinted at the possibility of frozen water in this system.
« Webb has clearly identified not only ice, but crystalline ice, which is also located in locations such as Saturn’s rings and frozen bodies in our Solar System Kuiper zone, » said Chen Hopkis, lead author of the new publication and assistant researcher.
All the icy water found by the Webb is combined with fine dust particles all over the tray, as tiny « dirty snowballs ». The results were published in Nature magazine.
Astronomers have been waiting for these definitive data for decades. Ice water is a vital ingredient in the discs around young stars – it greatly affects the formation of giant planets and can also be transported by small bodies such as comets and asteroids to fully formed rocky planets.
Now that researchers have detected ice water with Webb, they have opened the door for all researchers to study how these processes are evolving in new ways in many other planetary systems.
The star, named HD 181327, is significantly younger than our sun. It is estimated that it is 23 million years old, compared to the 4.6 billion years of the sun. The star has a slightly larger mass of the sun and is warmer, which led to the formation of a slightly larger system around it.
Ice is not evenly distributed throughout this system. The majority is where it is colder and farther away than the star. « The exterior of the album is made up of over 20% ice, » said Hi.
