NASA’s James Webb Telescope Spots a Star Shedding Its Skin Before a Supernova

Tony Ho Tran
·2 min read
2
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team.
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope just delivered one of its most stunning pics yet—and it was actually one of the first objects the spacecraft spotted when it went into orbit in 2022.

In June 2022, Webb observed a star named WR 124, one of the most enormous and brightest detectable stars in the observable universe. The celestial body is roughly 15,000 light-years away from Earth, and about 30 times the size of our sun.

NASA astronomers had the rare opportunity to peer at it using Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument. This allowed a rare look at the WR 124 as it went through a star phase dubbed Wolf-Rayet, or the process in which a star sheds off its outer layers before going into supernova.

The results are absolutely stunning. Take a look:

<div class="inline-image__credit">NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team.</div>
NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team.

Its outer layers appear as a halo of bright pink and purple gas and dust in the image. While dust might seem as boring as… well, dust here on Earth, stardust is actually pretty exciting for astronomers. Ejecta like the one from WR 124 help seed planets and eventually whole solar systems and galaxies. Scientists believe that the dust from dying stars could be further studied to give insight into how exactly Earth and our neighboring planets formed.

This is yet another example of the type of insights that were previously inaccessible to scientists before Webb was launched. Researchers didn’t really know before whether or not dust from aging stars could even survive a supernova blast. Now astronomers have the opportunity to study WR 124 more closely to find out the truth of the very building blocks off the cosmos.

Needless to say, there is plenty more where that came from. After all, there’s so far been no shortage of jaw-dropping pics, nail-biting drama, and fresh insights about the universe around us.

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