Hubble Observes Aftermath of Massive Collision – “Blueprint for How Planets Destroy Each Other”

Data from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope have revealed an expanding cloud of dust produced in a collision between two large bodies orbiting the bright nearby star Fomalhaut. This is the first time such a catastrophic event around another star has been imaged. Credit: ESA, NASA and M. Kornmesser

The Hubble Space Telescope offers insight into the nature of exoplanet Fomalhaut b.

What astronomers thought was a planet beyond our solar system, has now seemingly vanished from sight. Astronomers now suggest that a full-grown planet never existed in the first place. The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope had instead observed an expanding cloud of very fine dust particles caused by a titanic collision between two icy asteroid-sized bodies orbiting the bright star Fomalhaut, about 25 light-years from Earth.

“The Fomalhaut system is the ultimate test lab for all of our ideas about how exoplanets and star systems evolve,” said George Rieke of the University of Arizona’s Steward Observatory. “We do have evidence of such collisions in other systems, but none of this magnitude has ever been observed. This is a blueprint for how planets destroy each other.”

The object was previously believed to be a planet, called Fomalhaut b, and was first announced in 2008 based on data taken in 2004 and 2006. It was clearly visible in several years of Hubble observations that revealed it as a moving dot. Unlike other directly imaged exoplanets, nagging puzzles with Fomalhaut b arose early on. The object was unusually bright in visible light, but did not have any detectable infrared heat signature. Astronomers proposed that the added brightness came from a huge shell or ring of dust encircling the object that may have been collision-related. Also, early Hubble observations suggested the object might not be following an elliptical orbit, as planets usually do.

Illustration from the Hubble Space Telescope’s observations of Fomalhaut b’s expanding dust cloud from 2004 to 2013. The cloud was produced in a collision between two large bodies orbiting the bright nearby star Fomalhaut. This is the first time such a catastrophic event around another star has been imaged. Credit: NASA, ESA, A. Gáspár and G. Rieke/University of Arizona

“These collisions are exceedingly rare and so this is a big deal that we actually get to see one,” said András Gáspár of the University of Arizona. “We believe that we were at the right place at the right time to have witnessed such an unlikely event with the Hubble Space Telescope.”

“Our study, which analyzed all available archival Hubble data on Fomalhaut b, including the most recent images taken by Hubble, revealed several characteristics that together paint a picture that the planet-sized object may never have existed in the first place,” said Gáspár.

This image shows Fomalhaut, the star around which the newly discovered planet orbits. Fomalhaut is much hotter than our Sun, 15 times as bright, and lies 25 light-years from Earth. It is blazing through hydrogen at such a furious rate that it will burn out in only one billion years, 10% the lifespan of our star. The field of view is 2.7 x 2.9 degrees. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Digitized Sky Survey 2. Acknowledgment: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble)

Hubble images from 2014 showed the object had vanished, to the disbelief of the astronomers. Adding to the mystery, earlier images showed the object continuously fading over time. “Clearly, Fomalhaut b was doing things a bona fide planet should not be doing,” said Gáspár.

The resulting interpretation is that Fomalhaut b is not a planet, but a slowly expanding cloud blasted into space as a result of a collision between two large bodies. Researchers believe the collision occurred not too long prior to the first observations taken in 2004. By now the debris cloud, consisting of dust particles around 1 micron (1/50th the diameter of a human hair), is below Hubble’s detection limit. The dust cloud is estimated to have expanded by now to a size larger than the orbit of Earth around our Sun.

Fomalhaut is the brightest star in this image, seen in the upper-left. Fomalhaut is much hotter than our Sun, 15 times as bright, and lies 25 light-years from Earth. It is blazing through hydrogen at such a furious rate that it will burn out in only one billion years, 10% the lifespan of our star. Fomalhaut is located in the constellation Piscis Austrinus, the Southern Fish. Fomalhaut is the brigest star in this constellation, and is in fact one of the brightest stars in the night sky. Credit: A. Fujii

Equally confounding is that the object is not on an elliptical orbit, as expected for planets, but on an escape trajectory, or hyperbolic path. “A recently created massive dust cloud, experiencing considerable radiative forces from the central star Fomalhaut, would be placed on such a trajectory,” Gáspár said, “Our model is naturally able to explain all independent observable parameters of the system: its expansion rate, its fading, and its trajectory.”

Because Fomalhaut b is presently inside a vast ring of icy debris encircling the star, the colliding bodies were likely a mixture of ice and dust, like the cometary bodies that exist in the Kuiper belt on the outer fringe of our solar system. Gáspár and Rieke estimate that each of these comet-like bodies measured about 200 kilometers across. They also suggest that the Fomalhaut system may experience one of these collision events only every 200 000 years.

Gáspár, Rieke, and other astronomers will also be observing the Fomalhaut system with the upcoming NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, which is scheduled to launch in 2021.

For more on this story, read A Planet Beyond Our Solar System Mysteriously Vanished – Here’s What Astronomers Say Now.

Reference: “New HST data and modeling reveal a massive planetesimal collision around Fomalhaut” by András Gáspár and George H. Rieke, 20 April 2020, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1912506117