Webb Telescope: NASA Unveils Stunning New Snapshot of Binary Star System
The latest image captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope might be one of the observatory's most unique snapshots yet. Ryan Lau and a team at the National Space Foundation's NOIRLab led the investigation in question, looking at a binary star system that has dozens of rings of cosmic dust swirling about.
In the photo in question, Wolf-Raylet 140 can be seen with upwards of 17 rings around them. While it may look like a camera glare or other effect to most, Lau says the team's data captured confirms the rings are rather cosmic winds that have been created as a result of two stars orbiting each other.
These cosmic “tree rings” tell a story written by the stars.
— NASA Hallo-Webb Telescope 🕸🕷🎃 (@NASAWebb) October 12, 2022
Every 8 years, these 2 stars are brought together by their orbits, creating streams of gas that can then form a new ring of dust. Webb reveals 15 of the 17 rings here for the first time: https://t.co/k93phPNoec pic.twitter.com/7JHvpsd1A2
"There seemed to be a strange-looking diffraction pattern, and I worried that it was a visual effect created by the stars' extreme brightness," Lau says in a NASA press release. "However, as soon as I downloaded the final data I realized that I was not looking at a diffraction pattern, but instead rings of dust surrounding WR 140 – at least 17 of them."
Each ring around WR 140 is formed after each eight-year orbit as the stellar winds of each star are close enough to each other to interact. Similar to the growth of tree rings, the single photograph was able to technically capture upwards of 130 years of cosmic action.
"One of the biggest surprises was how many shells the telescope was able to detect. The shells furthest from the binary star have traversed over 70,000 times the distance from Earth to the Sun, at speeds of around 6 million miles per hour, through the harsh environment around a WR star—some of the hottest and most luminous stars known," Lau adds. "The survival of these distant shells shows that the dust formed by WR binaries like WR 140 will likely survive to enrich the surrounding interstellar environment. However, it wasn't enough for us to see these dusty shells. We wanted to know their spectroscopic signature and chemical composition. What will they add to the interstellar medium?"