The James Webb Space Telescope has captured the rare and fleeting phase of a dying star, the US space agency (NASA) announced Tuesday.
NASA released the image Tuesday at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas.
The observation was one of the first made by the Webb telescope after its launch in late 2021.
Its infrared ‘eyes’ observed all the gas and dust spewed into space by a huge hot star 15,000 light-years away. A light year is about 9.46 trillion kilometers.
Brilliant purple, material ejected from the star once it formed its outer shell.
The Hubble Space Telescope took a picture of the same transitioning star a few decades ago, though it looked more like a ball of fire without the fine details.
The transformation occurs only with some stars and is usually the last step before they explode and go supernova, according to scientists.
“We’ve never seen it like this before. It’s really exciting,” said Macarena García Marín, a scientist at the European Space Agency who is part of the project.
This star in the constellation Sagittarius, officially known as WR 124, is 30 times the mass of our sun and has already spewed enough material to equal 10 suns, according to NASA.
The largest and most powerful telescope ever launched into space, the James Webb is a $10 billion project and named after a former NASA administrator, which was sent into space in December as a European-made rocket. It is in orbit 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
The astronomers hope with James Webb to obtain more data on the beginnings of the Universe, including the birth of the first galaxies and stars, but also on the formation of the planets.
Source: TSF
