“How did we get here? It really goes back to that big question, and SZ Cha is the same type of young star, a T-Tauri star, as our Sun was 4.5 billion years ago at the dawn of the solar system,” said astronomer Catherine Espaillat of Boston University, in Massachusetts, who led both the 2008 Spitzer observations and the newly published Webb results. ![]() Following up on a peculiar reading by NASA’s previous infrared flagship observatory, the now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope, the agency’s James Webb Space Telescope detected distinct traces of the element neon in the dusty disk surrounding the young Sun-like star SZ Chamaeleontis (SZ Cha).ĭifferences in the neon readings between Spitzer and Webb point to a never-before-observed change in high-energy radiation that reaches the disk, which eventually causes it to evaporate, limiting the time planets have to form. ![]() Scientists are following neon signs in a search for clues to one planetary system’s future and the past of another – our own solar system.
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