Beta Pictoris is a young star, roughly 20 million years old, and located about 64 light-years away from Earth. It is surrounded by a vast disk of dust and rubble where planets are still forming—astronomers have already found three. In a new Science study, a team led by Sarah Betti, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, used the James Webb Space Telescope to look for ice in this disk. Researchers found both water and carbon dioxide ice.
James Webb telescope finds ice older than the star it orbits
Radiation and collisions reshape the planetary building materials.
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