Frozen Water in Young Star System
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Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Video imagery:
- Animation of circumstellar disk: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
- Artist’s concept of HD 181327 with disk: NASA, ESA, CSA, Ralf Crawford (STScI)
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Photos of galaxies, nebulas, stars, and planets scrolls up. It ends with a partial photo of Jupiter. Text: NEWS FROM THE UNIVERSE
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JUNE 2, 2025, FROZEN WATER IN YOUNG STAR SYSTEM. Animation, a cloud of dark dust makes a doughnut shape. In the middle of the doughnut is a bright yellow light that radiates up and down through the doughnut hole.
Text: Astronomers have long expected that frozen water could be found in young star systems but didn't have the technology to detect it - until the James Webb Space Telescope.
The animation zooms in. Chunks of ice move around in the cloud. Text: Webb has confirmed crystalline matter ice in the dusty disk surrounding HD 181327 . young Sun-like star 155 light years from Earth. A drawing shows a star that shines against dark space. Around it is a circle of ice crystals. Some of them reflect the starlight.
Text: The outer area of the disk consists of over 20% water ice.
The data looks similar to Webb's recent observations of the Kuiper Belt, which lies beyond the orbit of Neptune and may have been a source of water during our Solar System's formation.
Now that Webb has shown it can detect water ice, researchers will be studying it in many other planetary systems.
This news was brought to you in part by the SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE IN BALTIMORE, MARYLAND.
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