Spellbinding New Image had Captured an Extraordinary Phenomenon in Space
The Universe has been full with wonders, and therefore the James Webb Space Telescope has simply given the greatest views of one of them till now.
HIGHLIGHTS
- The star was a binary pair of rare stars within the constellation of Cygnus
- The colliding winds would also induce episodes of dust formation
- The dust was considered a form of carbon, that would absorb ultraviolet radiation
Well, here the object in question would be a star which would be around 5,600 light-years away, and Webb's infrared eye has picked out a unexpected detail which was the star being surrounded by what seem to be concentric rings of light radiating outward.
While Webb's characteristic diffraction spikes were not 'real', those concentric rings were and there was an exquisite and interesting clarification for them.
Well, the star was actually a binary pair of rare stars within the constellation of Cygnus. The interactions between them manufacture precise periodic eruptions of dust which was increasing out in shells into the space around the pair over time.
These shells of dust were glowing in infrared, that has allowed an instrument as sensitive as Webb's MIRI to resolve them in exquisite details.
When the two stars enter periastron which has been considered as a distance between Earth and Sun as they become close enough that their powerful winds collide.
Therefore, this produces shocks within the material around the stars, it would accelerate particles and generate energetic radiation, like X-rays. These colliding winds would also induce episodes of dust formation because the material within the colliding stellar wind cools.
The dust was considered to be a form of carbon, that would absorb ultraviolet radiation from the two stars. This would heat the dust, which was eventually causing it to re-emit thermal radiation. It was the same thing which was observed by Webb in infrared wavelengths.
The dust would then blown outward by the stellar wind, leading to the growth of the partial dust shells. They would expand and cool as they were blown outward by losing heat and density.
The thing at which people tend to be looking at in Webb's image could be sort of a series of bubbles. Well, the edge of every dust shell was more visible as people seem to be looking at a denser concentration of material due to perspective.
As the binary star's orbit includes a 7.94-year period, the wind collision and dust production occur like mechanism every 7.94 years. Therefore, it suggests that an individual could be able to count the rings of the nebula around the binary, like tree rings, to know the age of the outermost visible dust shell.
Almost 20 rings were visible, which suggests that an individual would be able to see around 160 years' worth of dust shells within the Webb image. Well, the most recent WR 140 periastron was determined in 2016.
Also Read: NASA shares an image of the 'Baby Stars' cluster as 'Space Butterfly'