James Webb Space Telescope captures star going supernova in a dazzling cloud of dust
By Sascha Pare published about 13 hours ago
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has snapped a picture of WR 124, a rare Wolf-Mayet star 30 times the size of our sun, ejecting a luminous cloud of cosmic dust.
The James Webb Space Telescope captured the Wolf-Mayet star WR124 in the middle of a cloud of cosmic dust just before it goes supernova. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team)
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a dazzling image of a star about to go supernova in a massive explosion.
The picture, released by NASA on Tuesday (March 14), shows the star WR 124 in the middle of a spectacular cosmic cloud. As it goes supernova, the star, which is about 30 solar masses, is expelling its outer layers; so far, it has ejected more than 10 solar masses' worth of material. This is a rarely seen phenomenon in some stars' life cycle called the Wolf-Rayet (WR) phase.
"Massive stars race through their life cycles, and only some of them go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before going supernova, making Webb's detailed observations of this rare phase valuable to astronomers," NASA officials wrote in a description of the images(opens in new tab).
The gigantic star resides 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagitta.
TheJWST first snapped a photo of WR 124 in June 2022, just after it became operational.The star's luminous halo is captured in unprecedented detail thanks to the telescope's ability to detect the infrared glow of gas as it cools down to form cosmic dust.
More:
https://www.livescience.com/james-webb-space-telescope-captures-star-going-supernova-in-a-dazzling-cloud-of-dust
= new reply since forum marked as read
We're seeing an event that happened 15,000 years ago. Amazing.
