James Webb Space Telescope Takes Fingerprint Of Rare Star System

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James Webb Space Telescope Takes Fingerprint Of Rare Star System
Photo Credit: NASA/James Webb

Ever since NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope embraced the skies, it has delivered breathtaking images of the cosmos. In just a few months of operations, the space observatory has chronicled ancient galaxies, glowing nebulae, and offered a new perspective of our neighboring planets. Now, the JWST has captured the “fingerprint” of a rare star system.

 

According to a paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the space telescope has snapped an image showing 17 dust rings. NASA believes the reason behind these hazy rings is the position of two stars that are around 5,000 light-years away from our planet.

 

What’s A Fingerprint In Cosmic Terms?

NASA explains, every time the stars’ shining streams of gas intertwine, a dusty ring is formed. The space agency likes to call this phenomenon a “fingerprint.” These dusty rings are just as breathtaking as they are important for astronomers to calculate the passage of time. These 17 rings are almost similar to the rings formed by a tree indicating each year of its life.

"We're looking at over a century of dust production from this system," said Ryan Lau, lead author, and astronomer at NOIRLab. "The image also illustrates just how sensitive this telescope is."

Earlier, the ground-based telescopes were only able to capture two dust rings, but thanks to the sophisticated technologies aboard the James Webb Space Telescope, “we see at least 17 of them,” Lao explains.

How Did JWST Capture This Image?

The space telescope leveraged its advanced Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) to snap the image. The instrument, unlike JWST’s Near-Infrared sensors, captures the light coming from objects that lie in the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Although the Near-Infrared sensors add bulk to the breathtaking cosmic images, they might not be as suitable as MIRI to study outer space dust rings. The latter is ideal for hunting cooler objects in space.

NASA Finds A Rare Star

The study further notes that one star in this system is very rare. Dubbed a Wolf-Rayet star, it is an O-type star, an object that is incredibly hot and comparatively difficult to locate.

As per the space agency, stars usually spew the element hydrogen, which is very light. However, Wolf-Rayet stars eject heavy elements that cool due to stellar winds, compressing them on interaction with another star’s breeze. This creates the right environment for new stars to be born.

"Even though Wolf-Rayet stars are rare in our galaxy because they are short-lived as far as stars go, it's possible they've been producing lots of dust throughout the history of the galaxy before they explode and/or form black holes," said Patrick Morris, co-author and an astrophysicist at Caltech.

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