Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Joseph Olmsted (STScI)

This artist concept portrays the star PDS 70 and its inner protoplanetary disk. New measurements by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have detected water vapor at distances of less than 100 million miles from the star – the region where rocky, terrestrial planets may be forming. This is the first detection of water in the terrestrial region of a disk already known to host two or more protoplanets, one of which is shown at upper right.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2023/news-2023-130

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: http://stsci.edu/copyright/