NASA's James Webb Space Telescope spies debris belts around Fomalhaut star

This image of the dusty debris disk surrounding the young star Fomalhaut is from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). (Supplied: NASA, ESA, CSA)

Astronomers have used NASA's James Webb Space Telescope to reveal three debris belts around a nearby young star named Fomalhaut — the first such features seen outside of our solar system.

The three nested belts extend as far as 23 billion kilometres out from the star — 150 times the distance from Earth to the Sun.