Hubble Telescope Captures Rare Collision Of Baby Planets Around Star Fomalhaut

Astronomers have made a groundbreaking discovery using NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, observing the catastrophic collision of baby planets around the star Fomalhaut, a notable celestial — located 25 light-years from Earth in the constellation Piscis Austrinus. This remarkable finding, detailed in a study published on December 18 in Science, marks the first time such a phenomenon has been witnessed outside our solar system, serving as a cautionary tale for planet-hunters. In 2008, Hubble detected an exoplanet, Fomalhaut b, which appeared to be approximately three times the size of Jupiter and orbited Fomalhaut at a distance about three times farther than Pluto’s orbit around the sun.

However, recent Hubble observations revealed that the object had vanished, only to be replaced by a new point of light elsewhere in the system. The Fomalhaut system is enveloped by a vast and intricate network of dust belts. In 2023, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope discovered two belts around Fomalhaut, potentially analogous to the Asteroid Belt and the Kuiper belt in our solar system.

The images also unveiled a large dust cloud within the outer ring, dubbed the “Great Dust Cloud,” which may have been generated by a collision.