From: Andy Soos, ENN
Published January 31, 2013 08:04 AM

The Strange World Around Fomalhaut

Fomalhaut b is a confirmed extrasolar object and planet orbiting the A-type main sequence star Fomalhaut, approximately 25 light-years away in the constellation of Piscis Austrinus. The object was discovered in 2008. Newly released NASA Hubble Space Telescope images of a vast debris disk encircling the nearby star Fomalhaut and a mysterious planet circling it may provide forensic evidence of a titanic planetary disruption in the system. Astronomers are surprised to find the debris belt (a really big asteroid belt when compared to the one between Mars and Jupiter) is wider than previously known, spanning a section of space from 14 to nearly 20 billion miles from the star. Even more surprisingly, the latest Hubble images have allowed a team of astronomers to calculate the planet follows an unusual elliptical orbit that will carry it on a potentially destructive path through the vast dust ring.


If current calculations are proven to be correct, Fomalhaut b is due to dive back into that debris disk around 2032, at which point astronomers will start watching very carefully to see if they can spot any collisions with further objects. If the planet orbits in the same plane as the debris disk, such collisions are entirely possible. Not a good place to live.





Fomalhaut b is orbiting its host star at a wide separation, where forming massive planets is difficult. To explain its current location, Fomalhaut b could have been dynamically scattered by a more massive, unseen body located at smaller separations. Several ground-based observations have searched for this hypothetical Fomalhaut c but have yet to find it, although they have limited the mass of such an object to be less than thirteen times the mass of Jupiter. Instead, Fomalhaut b could have formed in situ if it coalesced from small pebble-sized objects that rapidly formed into a protoplanetary core which in turn accreted a gaseous envelope.






For further information see Fomalhaut B.

Orbit image via NASA.

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