Fomalhaut's Asteroid Belts
Fomalhaut is just 25 light years from Earth, in the constellation of Pisces Austrinus (Southern Fish), in fact the name itself is from Arabic for Mouth of the Whale (Fom al-Haut).
and is a beautiful A3V type star (Type A meaning White and larger than our Sun, the V meaning it's on the main sequence burning hydrogen as our Sun is). However the star is fairly young, thought to be no more than half a billion years of age (compared to 4.6 Billion for our star).
The star is a binary star, and has 2 companion stars that orbit on very slow distant paths, making the planetary system of Fomalhaut mostly unaffected by them.
Two distinct asteroid belts have been found and inner and outer ring, one of which is distinctly off centre, leading the interesting possibility that an unseen planet may be causing the odd unexpected behavior.
It is thought that the debris could be the remnants of a long past collision, slowly being pushed out of the system by the energy of the sun.
In the upper image, an knot like structure in the outer ring appears to be a concentrated area of asteroids, or at least, that is the assumed guess, there is the possibility it could be a much further off object superimposed over the dust ring, making it appear that way.
At this point, there are far more questions than answers from the JWST data, and I am certain there will be much more observations over time, especially to see how the rings change over time.
