He James Webb Space Telescope NASA, captured the imminent death of a star. Known as the Wolf-Rayet phase, this is characterized by being one of the most luminous and massive stars detectable, since during this stage the star releases its outer layers before giving way to a supernova.
This image was captured by James Webb in June 2022and corresponds to the star WR 124 which due to the powerful infrared instruments of the space telescope show details never seen before of the Wolf-Rayet.
WR 124 is located 15,000 light-years away. in the sagittarius constellation And what has been fascinating to astronomers is that this star was captured in a valuable phase, as Wolf-Rayet stars are in the process of shedding their outer layers, resulting in their characteristic halos of gas and dust.
This star has a mass 30 times greater than our Sun and it is estimated that it has released material equivalent to about 10 soles. While this process occurs, the released cosmic dust moves away and cools, and it can be captured by James Webb’s instruments.
As explained by NASA, the cosmic dust that survives the supernova explosion is of great interest to astronomers for various reasons. One of them is that this matter holds a lot of information and over time it comes together to form plans and serves as a platform for molecules to group together and form components similar to those that gave life on Earth.
With this new image captured by James Webb, a new possibility arises to study cosmic dust that is best observed at infrared wavelengths of light. Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) balances the brightness of WR 124’s stellar core and the gnarled details in the fainter surrounding gas.
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Webb also reveals the lumpy structure of the nebula of ejected gas and dust that now surrounds the star, and WR 124 also serves as an analogy to help astronomers understand a crucial period in the early history of the universe.
