In light of the really impressive JWST observations of Fomalhaut that were released yesterday, I wanted to share my view of the Fomalhaut system. Story time!

Fomalhaut is a bright nearby star that has been known for decades to have a debris disk, a belt of dust caused by asteroids crashing into each other. Sounds very dramatic, but we see them all over the place! Our own Kuiper Belt and asteroid belt are extremely faint/low mass versions of debris disks we observe around other stars.

Loops of superheated plasma larger than the Earth dancing across the Sun, recorded by the Solar Dynamics Observatory spacecraft.

Credit: SDO/NASA Goddard
Further reading: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/news/coronal-rain.html

A full rotation of the Moon in high resolution created from photos captured by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft.

Source: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap200719.html

Credit: LRO/ASU/NASA

The Carina Nebula, in an image captured for Hubble's 20th anniversary back I n 2010. Good golly.

Image: NASA, ESA, and M. Livio, The Hubble Heritage Team and the Hubble 20th Anniversary Team