The JWST Early Release Science Program for Direct Observations of Exoplanetary Systems. VI. Evidence for Radially Evolving Icy Grains in the HD 141569A Disk via NIRCam Coronagraphic Imaging

Millar-Blanchaer, Maxwell A.; Choquet, Élodie; Lawson, Kellen; Marino, Sebastián; Kammerer, Jens; Carter, Aarynn L.; Rebollido, Isabel; Leisenring, Jarron M.; Kim, Minjae; Kalas, Paul; Stapelfeldt, Karl R; Hinkley, Sasha; Booth, Mark; Grady, Carol A.; Matthews, Elisabeth C.; Biller, Beth A.; Skemer, Andrew; Girard, Julien H.; Wolff, Schuyler G.; Ward-Duong, Kimberly; Meyer, Michael R.; Boccaletti, Anthony; Pantin, Eric; Matthews, Brenda C.; Metchev, Stanimir; Perrin, Marshall D.; Chen, Christine H.; Crotts, Katie; Absil, Olivier; Balmer, William O.; Calissendorff, Per; Cugno, Gabriele; Currie, Thayne; Danielski, Camilla; Hoch, Kielan K. W.; Janson, Markus; Manjavacas, Elena; Lagage, Pierre-Olivier; Ben J. Sutlieff; Ray, Shrishmoy; Ren, Bin B.; Rickman, Emily; Suárez, Genaro; Theissen, Christopher A.; Uyama, Taichi; Quirrenbach, Andreas; Wang, Jason J.; Whiteford, Niall; Wyatt, Mark C.; Zurlo, Alice; (The JWST ERS Collaboration)

doi:10.3847/1538-4357/ae0615

Published December 1, 2025 | Version Published

Journal Article Open

The JWST Early Release Science Program for Direct Observations of Exoplanetary Systems. VI. Evidence for Radially Evolving Icy Grains in the HD 141569A Disk via NIRCam Coronagraphic Imaging

1. University of California, Santa Barbara
2. French National Centre for Scientific Research
3. Goddard Space Flight Center
4. University of Exeter
5. European Southern Observatory
6. Space Telescope Science Institute
7. European Space Astronomy Centre
8. University of Arizona
9. University College London
10. University of Warwick
11. University of California, Berkeley
12. Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence
13. Jet Propulsion Lab
14. UK Astronomy Technology Centre
15. Friedrich Schiller University Jena
16. Eureka Scientific
17. Max Planck Institute for Astronomy
18. University of Edinburgh
19. University of California, Santa Cruz
20. Smith College
21. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor
22. LESIA, Observatoire de Paris, Université PSL, CNRS, Sorbonne Université, Université de Paris, 5 place Jules Janssen, 92195 Meudon, France
23. National Research Council Canada
24. Western University
25. Johns Hopkins University
26. University of Liège
27. University of Zurich
28. The University of Texas at San Antonio
29. University of Hawaii at Hilo
30. Arcetri Astrophysical Observatory
31. Stockholm University
32. University of Paris
33. University of Queensland
34. Université Côte d'Azur, Observatoire de la Côte d'Azur (OCA), CNRS, Laboratoire Lagrange, Bd de l'Observatoire, CS 34229, 06304 Nice cedex 4, France
35. American Museum of Natural History
36. University of California, San Diego
37. California State University, Northridge
38. Heidelberg University
39. Northwestern University
40. California Institute of Technology
41. University of Cambridge
42. Diego Portales University
43. Millennium Nucleus on Young Exoplanets and their Moons (YEMS), Chile

We present JWST NIRCam coronagraphic observations of the HD 141569A circumstellar disk, obtained as part of the JWST Early Release Science program. The observations recover the multi-ringed structure seen in previous shorter-wavelength observations, but at filters centered on the ∼3 μm water ice absorption feature and a complementary continuum region (F300M and F360M, respectively). The observations reveal apparent absorption between the F300M and F360M filters that decreases with radius, with a notable change around 200 au, between the innermost and outermost two rings. These results are consistent whether the data is reduced via deconvolution or through a forward-modeling approach. We demonstrate that these changes suggest a radial decrease in the water ice mass fraction by a factor of ∼3–10 and possibly a change in minimum grain size. We do not detect any point sources within the system and can exclude planetary companions 2 Jupiter masses and greater beyond 1″ radius (∼111 au). These observations and the subsequent analysis illustrate a robust pathway for using JWST/NIRCam to characterize the distribution of water ice in other circumstellar disks. We highlight some of the early lessons learned from this work that we hope will be useful for future circumstellar disk observation planning and analysis.

Copyright and License

© 2025. The Author(s). Published by the American Astronomical Society. Original content from this work may be used under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. Any further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the title of the work, journal citation and DOI.

Acknowledgement

This project was supported by a grant from STScI (JWST-ERS-01386) under NASA contract NAS5-03127. This work benefited from the 2022 Exoplanet Summer Program in the Other Worlds Laboratory (OWL) at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a program funded by the Heising-Simons Foundation. J.M.L. acknowledges support from the JWST NIRCam project under NASA contract NAS5-02105 (M. Rieke, University of Arizona, PI). S.M. was supported by a Royal Society University Research Fellowship (URF- R1-221669). E.C. acknowledges funding from the European Union (ERC, ESCAPE, project No. 101044152). Views and opinions expressed are, however, those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them. O.A. is a Senior Research Associate of the Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique—FNRS. A.Z. acknowledges support from ANID—Millennium Science Initiative Program—Center Code NCN2024_001.

Facilities

JWST - James Webb Space Telescope (NIRCam).

Software References

astropy (Astropy Collaboration et al. 2013, 2018), JAX (J. Bradbury et al. 2018), NumPy (C. R. Harris et al. 2020), SciPy (P. Virtanen et al. 2020), spaceKLIP (J. Kammerer et al. 2022; A. L. Carter et al. 2023), pyNRC (J. Leisenring 2024), cmasher (E. van der Velden 2020), pyKLIP (J. J. Wang et al. 2015), Matplotlib (J. D. Hunter 2007), Vortex Image Processing (C. A. Gomez Gonzalez et al. 2017; V. Christiaens et al. 2023), MCFOST (C. Pinte et al. 2006, 2009).

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Additional details

Is supplemented by: Dataset: 10.17909/ty1h-9x40 (DOI); Dataset: 10.5281/zenodo.16734248 (DOI)

Space Telescope Science Institute
JWST-ERS-0138
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
NAS5-02105
Royal Society University Research Fellowship
URF- R1-221669
European Research Council
101044152
Agencia Nacional de Investigación y Desarrollo
NCN2024_001

Submitted: 2025-06-05
Accepted: 2025-08-12
Available: 2025-11-26

Published

Caltech groups: Division of Physics, Mathematics and Astronomy (PMA)
Publication Status: Published

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The JWST Early Release Science Program for Direct Observations of Exoplanetary Systems. VI. Evidence for Radially Evolving Icy Grains in the HD 141569A Disk via NIRCam Coronagraphic Imaging

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The JWST Early Release Science Program for Direct Observations of Exoplanetary Systems. VI. Evidence for Radially Evolving Icy Grains in the HD 141569A Disk via NIRCam Coronagraphic Imaging

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