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The James Webb Space Telescope has released a colorful new portrait of the iconic Ring Nebula.
New images capture intricate detail in planetary nebulae, giant clouds of cosmic gas and dust that harbor the remnants of dying stars.
The two images were taken using instruments from the Space Observatory at different wavelengths of infrared that are invisible to the human eye. Webb has previously taken different perspectives of the Ring Nebula and the similar Southern Ring Nebula.
A long-time favorite of astronomers, the Ring Nebula has been studied for many years for its observability and insight into the life of stars. From Earth he is more than 2,000 light-years away in the constellation Lyra, but on clear summer nights it can be seen by those who observe the sky with binoculars.
Contrary to their name, planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets, but they are usually circular in structure, and when the French astronomer Charles Messier discovered them for the first time in 1764, planetary nebulae were thought to be planets. It got its name because it resembles the disk that forms.
Messier and astronomer D’Arquier de Perpoix discovered the Ring Nebula in 1779.
Some nebulae are stellar nurseries where stars are born. Ring nebulae are born as dying stars called white dwarfs begin to shed their outer layers into space, forming glowing rings and expanding gas clouds.
“As a final farewell, the hot core ionizes, or heats, this ejected gas, and the nebula responds with a colorful emission of light,” writes Cardiff University astronomer Roger Wesson. NASA blog post Webb’s latest observations of the Ring Nebula. “The question arises as to how spherical stars can create such complex and delicate nonspherical structures.”
Wesson and his international team “ESSENcE” (short for JWST-era Evolved StarS and its nebulae) used Webb’s near-infrared camera and mid-infrared instruments to see how planetary nebulae evolve over time. We’ve captured unprecedented detail to help you better understand how things evolve. .
“The nebula’s bright, iconic ring structure is composed of about 20,000 individual clumps of dense molecular hydrogen gas, each clump about the same weight as Earth,” Wesson writes. Masu. Pointing away from the dying star, the ring’s outer ring has a prominent sharp feature that glows in the infrared but was only faintly visible in previous images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.
The researchers believe the spikes are due to molecules forming in the ring’s dark shadow.
In images taken with a mid-infrared instrument, also called MIRI, a faint halo outside the ring was clearly visible.
“The surprising finding was the presence of up to 10 regularly spaced concentric features within this faint halo,” Wesson writes.
Initially, the researchers thought that the observed arcs formed when the central star released its outer layers over time. But thanks to Webb’s susceptibility, scientists now believe that the arc in the halo could be caused by something else.
“When a single star evolves into a planetary nebula, as far as we know, no process has such a duration,” Wesson writes. “Instead, these rings suggest that there must be a companion star in the system that orbits as far away from the central star as Pluto moves away from the sun.” As it was ejecting its atmosphere, the companion shaped and sculpted the effluent.”