Planet Formation at Solar System Scales with the James Webb Space Telescope

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Planetary systems like our own form within vast disks of primordial gas and dust around newborn stars. This project will observe such disks spanning a range of ages with the James Webb Space Telescope to reveal the detailed in-situ physics of planet-forming disks themselves. We will deliver the sharpest-ever infrared images in astronomy, exploiting the only Australian-designed instrument on the spacecraft: the Aperture Masking Interferometer. This yields new physics for actively growing protoplanets, carved rings and gaps in disks, and gravitationally sculpted patterns of leftover cometary debris. Confronting state-of-the-art models with these data will immediately yield profound insights into planetary system formation, including our own.