The Webb Telescope Reveals That the Young Hot Star Vega is Actually Quite Alone.

Astronomers have long speculated about the possibility that Vega, a star located just 25 light-years from Earth, might host exoplanets. A little over a decade ago, a large void was discovered between two belts surrounding Vega, suggesting that this star could have several planets in orbit. In 2021, other researchers reported the detection of what they believed could be a giant gas planet similar to Jupiter or Neptune orbiting very close to the star. With the launch of the ultra-sensitive James Webb Space Telescope, definitive evidence for the existence of a planet in the Vega system was anticipated. However, after observing it with Webb and gathering additional data from the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA scientists did not find what they expected.

The latest observations seem to suggest that previous theories might not be correct, and that in the area around Vega, there is only a swirl of debris. George Rieke, a researcher from the University of Arizona, commented that the combined observations from Hubble and Webb have revealed new details about the Vega system that were previously unknown.

Vega, located in the constellation Lyra, is a young and robust type A star that rotates much faster than our Sun. At about 450 million years old, it emits intense blue-white light and is 40 times brighter than the Sun. Its rapid rotation, completing a turn every 16 hours, poses a challenge for scientists trying to track its movement and search for signs of planets that may be gravitationally interacting with it.

The new study, which will be published in two papers in The Astrophysical Journal, focuses on a detailed analysis of Vega's debris disk, which extends about 100 billion miles and is oriented toward Earth. It was previously thought that this disk contained material that could form planets, similar to what occurred in our own solar system. However, the findings from Webb and Hubble indicated that Vega’s disk is surprisingly smooth and that there was no evidence of large planets that could be disturbing the dust in its vicinity, which is typical in stellar systems of its age.

Andras Gáspár, another member of the research team, noted that the architecture of Vega's disk is remarkably different from that of other circumstellar disks they have studied. Despite its uniformity, a small and subtle void has been discovered far from the star, ruling out the possibility of planets of at least Neptune's mass existing there.

Interestingly, Vega is known for having inspired the idea in the scientific community that other stars might host planets, and that the material orbiting these stars, considered the building blocks of potential life, could be a stronghold of habitability in the cosmos.