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A new false color infrared image from the Webb Space Telescope has revealed an unexpected structure extending out from the two debris disks that surround the near-by star Beta Pictoris, with computer modeling suggesting might this structure have been the result of a large collision as recently as only 100 years ago.

That false-colr image is the right, with this newly discovered structure, described by the scientists as resembling “a cat’s tail”, on the right side. The infrared light of the star has been blocked in the center in order to see the details of the disk.

Webb’s mid-infrared data also revealed differences in temperature between Beta Pic’s two disks, which likely is due to differences in composition. “We didn’t expect Webb to reveal that there are two different types of material around Beta Pic, but MIRI clearly showed us that the material of the secondary disk and cat’s tail is hotter than the main disk,” said Christopher Stark, a co-author of the study at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “The dust that forms that disk and tail must be very dark, so we don’t easily see it at visible wavelengths — but in the mid-infrared, it’s glowing.”

To explain the hotter temperature, the team deduced that the dust may be highly porous “organic refractory material,” similar to the matter found on the surfaces of comets and asteroids in our solar system. For example, a preliminary analysis of material sampled from asteroid Bennu by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission found it to be very dark and carbon-rich, much like what MIRI detected at Beta Pic.

In an attempt to explain the cat’s tail, the scientists used computer models, which suggested it might have been caused by an event that produced a lot of dust, such as a collision between two large objects in the debris disk, and that event could have happened as recently as a hundred years ago.

This hypothesis remains unconfirmed, with much more data required before a final explanation can be accepted.