The latest image taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope may be one of the observatory’s most unique shots to date. Ryan Lau and a team at the National Space Foundation’s NOIRLab led the investigation in question, looking at a binary star system with dozens of rings of cosmic dust orbiting around it.
In the image in question, a Wolf-Raylet 140 can be seen with upwards of 17 rings around. While it may seem like camera glare or another effect to most people, Lau says the team’s captured data confirm that the rings are somewhat cosmic winds created as a result of two stars orbiting each other.
These cosmic “tree rings” tell a story written by the stars.
Every 8 years, these two stars are brought together by their orbits, producing streams of gas that can then form a new ring of dust. Webb reveals 15 out of 17 episodes here for the first time: https://t.co/k93phPNoec pic.twitter.com/7JHvpsd1A2
– NASA’s Halo Web Telescope 🕸🕷🎃 (@NASAWebb) October 12 2022
“There appears to be a strange looking diffraction pattern, and I was concerned that it was a visual effect created by the intense brightness of the stars,” Lau says in a NASA press release. “However, once I downloaded the final data, I realized that I was not looking at the diffraction pattern, but instead, I was looking for rings of dust surrounding the WR 140 – at least 17 of them.”
Each ring forms around WR 140 after each eight-year orbit where each star’s stellar winds are close enough to each other to interact. Similar to the growth of tree rings, the single image was technically capable of capturing over 130 years of cosmic motion.
“One of the biggest surprises was how many Shells the telescope was able to detect. The shells farthest from the binary star have traveled more than 70,000 times the distance from Earth to the Sun, at speeds of about 6 million miles per hour, through the harsh environment around WR—some of the hottest and brightest stars known,” Lau adds. Distant shells that dust formed by WR binaries such as WR 140 are likely to survive to enrich the surrounding interstellar environment. However, it was not enough to see these dusty shells. We wanted to know their spectral signature and chemical composition. What will they add to the interstellar medium? “
For more images from the Webb Space Telescope and other cosmic stories, check out the ComicBook Invasion Center here.
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