A colorful new portrait of the iconic Ring Nebula in the constellation Lyra. Taken from X (former Twitter)
According to a report by CNN on the 29th local time yesterday, the James Webb Space Telescope revealed a new colorful portrait of the iconic Ring Nebula. The Ring Nebula has long been a favorite of astronomers, having been studied for years due to its observability and the insight it can provide into the lifespan of stars. Located more than 2,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Lyra, it can be seen by skygazers using binoculars on clear summer nights.
In 1779, Messier and astronomer Darquier de Pellepoix discovered the Ring Nebula. Some nebulae are places where stars are born. The Ring Nebula forms when a dying star (called a white dwarf) begins shedding its outer layers into space, creating a glowing ring and expanding cloud of gas.
Cardiff University astronomer Roger Wesson noted in a NASA blog post about Webb’s latest observations, “As a final farewell, the hot core now ionizes or heats the expelled gas, while the nebula respond with colorful lights.”
Wesson and his international team ESSENcE (which stands for Evolving Stars and Their Nebulae in the JWST Era) captured unprecedented detail using Webb’s near-infrared camera and mid-infrared instrument.
“The nebula’s bright signature ring structure is made up of about 20,000 clusters of dense molecular hydrogen gas, each with the mass of Earth,” Wesson said. He also said the ring’s exterior has prominent spikes that point away from the The direction of the dying star, these features glow in infrared light but were only faintly visible in previous images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
“The surprising finding is that there are as many as ten regularly spaced concentric features in this faint halo,” Wesson said.
The team originally thought that the observed arcs formed as the central star shed its outer layers over time. But because of the Webb telescope’s sensitivity, scientists now believe that the arcs in the rings may have other causes.
“As far as we know, there is no such time period when a star evolves into a planetary nebula,” Wesson said. He also said: “Instead, these halos indicate that there must be a companion star in the system. , which orbits as far from the central star as Pluto is from the sun. As the dying star shed its atmosphere, the companion star shaped the outflow and sculpted it.”
James Webb Space Telescope.Figure: Taken from Wikipedia
