Ring Around Fomalhaut

Explanation: Fomalhaut ( sounds like “foam-a-lot”) is a bright, young, star, a mere 25 light-year trip from planet Earth in the direction of the constellation Piscis Austrinus . Earlier infrared observations identified a torus of cold material surrounding the nearby star but the panels above detail the sharpest ever visible light-image of Fomalhaut's dusty debris ring, recorded by the Hubble Space Telescope's ACS camera . Overwhelming glare from the star is masked by an occulting disk in the camera's coronagraph. The off-center ring with a sharp inner boundary is taken to be strong evidence of a massive planet orbiting far from Fomalhaut, shaping and maintaining the ring's inner edge. Starting 133 astronomical units (Earth-Sun distances) from Fomalhaut, the dusty ring itself is likely a larger, younger analog of our own Kuiper Belt - the solar system's outer reservoir of icy bodies .