{"id":11406,"date":"2022-07-12T18:35:40","date_gmt":"2022-07-12T10:35:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/a-dying-star-through-the-eyes-of-the-james-webb-space-telescope\/"},"modified":"2022-07-12T18:35:40","modified_gmt":"2022-07-12T10:35:40","slug":"a-dying-star-through-the-eyes-of-the-james-webb-space-telescope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/a-dying-star-through-the-eyes-of-the-james-webb-space-telescope\/","title":{"rendered":"A dying star through the eyes of the James Webb Space Telescope"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This side-by-side comparison shows observations of the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, at left, and mid-infrared light, at right, from NASA\u2019s Webb Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The James Webb Space Telescope\u2019s multi-wavelength observations of the Southern Ring Nebula reveal the dying throes of a star flinging off vast amounts of stellar debris, and showed for the first time the star responsible for the spectacle is sheathed in its own cloak of dust.<\/p>\n

These side by side views of the Southern Ring Nebula were captured in different wavelengths by the James Webb Space Telescope\u2019s U.S.-built Near Infrared Camera (left) and European Mid-Infrared Instrument (right). The planetary nebula is located 2,500 light-years from Earth.<\/p>\n

There are two stars in the middle of the ball of gas and dust. The brighter of the two is an earlier stage of stellar evolution, and the dimmer object is a white dwarf star that has been expelling ionized gas and dust for thousands of years.<\/p>\n

The Southern Ring Nebula is a type of object called a planetary nebula. Cataloged as NGC 3132, the Southern Ring Nebula lies in the constellation Vela in the southern sky. See a full-resolution (21.3 MB) view from NIRCam of the Southern Ring Nebula.<\/p>\n

Webb\u2019s science instruments, with imaging and spectroscopic measurement capabilities, will allow astronomers to measure the chemical make-up of feature across the sky. The $10 billion mission \u2014 the largest telescope ever put into space \u2014 is led by NASA, with contributions from the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis observation shows the Southern Ring Nebula almost face-on, but if we could rotate it to view it edge-on, its three-dimensional shape would more clearly look like two bowls placed together at the bottom, opening away from one another with a large hole at the center,\u201d NASA said in a press release.<\/p>\n

The star at the end of its life cycle has been ejecting successive waves of material, visible in Webb\u2019s imagery like the rings of a tree trunk. The outermost layers were expelled first.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the star is dying, in its last dying throes, it starts to shake. It pulsates. And at the end of that, poof, it come out,\u201d said Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb\u2019s project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, where the observatory is controlled. \u201cSo you see what the star did just before it created this planetary nebula. I find it fascinating because it\u2019s like geological layers, and you can see the history of its last moments.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The bright star at the center of NGC 3132, while prominent when viewed by NASA\u2019s Webb Telescope in near-infrared light, plays a supporting role in sculpting the surrounding nebula. A second star, barely visible at lower left along one of the bright star\u2019s diffraction spikes, is the nebula\u2019s source. It has ejected at least eight layers of gas and dust over thousands of years. This image was taken by Webb\u2019s Near Infrared Camera. The blue material is ionized gas. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Radial lines emanating through the outer edge of the nebula\u2019s debris cloud come from starlight shining out through holes in the dust, like sunlight piercing gaps in a cloud.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs the star ejects shells of material, dust and molecules form within them \u2013 changing the landscape even as the star continues to expel material,\u201d NASA said. \u201cThis dust will eventually enrich the areas around it, expanding into what\u2019s known as the interstellar medium. And since it\u2019s very long-lived, the dust may end up traveling through space for billions of years and become incorporated into a new star or planet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Webb\u2019s MIRI instrument, which sees longer-wavelength light not visible to telescopes like Hubble, was able to obtain the best view of the star responsible for it all at the center of the Southern Ring Nebula.<\/p>\n

The blue light in the MIRI image is the signal from hydrocarbon grains, according to Karl Gordon, a mid-infrared astronomer. The inner region of the nebula is glowing hot, and MIRI revealed both the still-active bright star and the dimmer white dwarf, which itself is blanketed in a tightly-bound blanket of dust.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt the longer wavelengths with MIRI, that hidden star just pops out,\u201d said Chris Evans, Webb\u2019s project scientist at the European Space Agency, which managed development of the MIRI instrument. \u201cYou\u2019ve got that dust-obscured white dwarf in there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s by having that long wavelength \u2014 for the first time with this fidelity and sensitivity \u2014 that it just pops straight out and we can kind of reconstruct the history of it,\u201d Evans said in a press conference Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Email the author.<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n

Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This side-by-side comparison shows observations of the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, at left, and mid-infrared light, at right, from NASA\u2019s Webb Telescope. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI The James Webb Space Telescope\u2019s multi-wavelength observations of the Southern Ring Nebula reveal the dying throes of a star flinging off vast amounts of stellar debris, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11406","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11406"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11406"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11406\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11406"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11406"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11406"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}