University of Sydney and University of Cambridge researchers followed a large dust cloud that was produced by violent interactions between two big stars. Over the course of 16 years, infrared pictures of the binary star system WR140 were taken.

Additionally, a separate investigation utilising NASA's James Webb Space Telescope revealed almost 20 nested dust plumes that were accelerating.

A massive Wolf-Rayet star and a larger blue supergiant star are gravitationally locked in an eight-year orbit in the star WR140. Researchers can observe how starlight can alter matter as it blasts out plumes of dust that are millions of times longer than the distance between the Earth and the Sun. Radiation pressure is the force that light uses to push matter while carrying motion.

'It's difficult to detect starlight producing acceleration because the force decreases with distance and other forces quickly take over,' said Yinuo Han, the first author of an article published in Nature.

'The substance must be quite close to the star or the radiation pressure must be really high in order to observe acceleration at the level where it becomes quantifiable. These effects are amplified by the binary star WR140, whose violent radiation field makes them detectable by our high-precision measurements.

The University of Sydney's Prof. Peter Tuthill, a co-author, said: 'Like clockwork, this star blasts forth sculpted smoke rings every eight years, with all this fascinating physics written then inflated in the wind like a banner for us to read.

I never imagined we'd be able to observe the physics in action in this way. WR140's plume is already visible in the data, unfolding like a massive dust sail. Like a yacht receiving a gale, it suddenly accelerates when it catches the photon wind pouring from the star.