Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2026

MARCH-APRIL 2026 I n a historical milestone, astrono- mers using the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope witnessed the catastrophic collisions in a nearby planetary system. As they observed the bright star Fomalhaut, scientists Hubble sees asteroids colliding around nearby star by NASA/ESA T his composite NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image shows the debris ring and dust clouds cs1 and cs2 around the star Fomalhaut. For comparison, dust cloud cs1, imaged in 2012, is pictured with dust cloud cs2, imaged in 2023. The dashed circles mark the location of these clouds. When dust cloud cs2 sud- denly appeared, astronomers quickly noticed they had witnessed the violent collision of two massive objects. Previously thought to be a planet, cs1 is now classified as a similar debris cloud. In this image, Fomalhaut itself is masked out to allow the fainter features to be seen. Its location is marked by the white star. [NASA, ESA, P. Kalas (UC Berkeley), J. DePasquale (STScI)]