File:Webb Finds Star Duo Forms ‘Fingerprint’ in Space (WR140a).jpeg
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[edit]DescriptionWebb Finds Star Duo Forms ‘Fingerprint’ in Space (WR140a).jpeg |
English: A new image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope reveals a remarkable cosmic sight: at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars. Located just over 5,000 light-years from Earth, the duo is collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140.
Each ring was created when the two stars came close together and their stellar winds (streams of gas they blow into space) met, compressing the gas and forming dust. The stars’ orbits bring them together about once every eight years; like the rings of a tree’s trunk, the dust loops mark the passage of time. In addition to Webb’s overall sensitivity, its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) is uniquely qualified to study the dust rings, what Ryan Lau, the lead author from NSF's NOIRLab, and his colleagues call shells, because they are thicker and wider than they appear in the image. Webb’s science instruments detect infrared light, a range of wavelengths invisible to the human eye. MIRI detects the longest infrared wavelengths, which means it can often see cooler objects – including the dust rings – than Webb’s other instruments can. MIRI’s spectrometer also revealed the composition of the dust, formed mostly from material ejected by a type of star known as a Wolf-Rayet star. A Wolf-Rayet star is born with at least 25 times more mass than our Sun and is nearing the end of its life, when it will likely collapse directly to black hole, or explode as a supernova. Burning hotter than in its youth, a Wolf-Rayet star generates powerful winds that push huge amounts of gas into space. The Wolf-Rayet star in this particular pair may have shed more than half its original mass via this process. |
Date | 12 October 2022 (upload date) |
Source | Webb Finds Star Duo Forms ‘Fingerprint’ in Space |
Author | NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech |
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[edit]ESA/Webb images, videos and web texts are released by the ESA under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided they are clearly and visibly credited. Detailed conditions are below; see the ESA copyright statement for full information. For images created by NASA or on the webbtelescope.org website, use the {{PD-Webb}} tag.
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Author | Space Telescope Science Institute Office of Public Outreach |
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Source | ESA/Webb |
Credit/Provider | NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech |
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Date and time of data generation | 17:00, 12 October 2022 |
Software used | Adobe Photoshop 23.5 (Macintosh) |
File change date and time | 18:00, 5 October 2022 |
Date and time of digitizing | 10:20, 5 August 2022 |
Date metadata was last modified | 05:44, 6 October 2022 |
Unique ID of original document | xmp.did:adb0a3cb-d16f-47d8-add9-dbaf4c7d525a |
Keywords | WR 140 |
Contact information | [email protected]
ESA Office, Space Telescope Science Institute, 3700 San Martin Dr Baltimore, MD, 21218 United States |
IIM version | 4 |