Webb Captures Spectacular Image Of Dying Star's Outburst 4000 Years In The Making
Most of us will never live long enough to see the kind of deep space travel depicted in shows like "Star Trek" become a reality, but in lieu of such sci-fi adventures, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to snap incredible images from far, far away. The latest one is being described as the most detailed image of planetary nebula NGC 1514 to date, as seen above (click to enlarge for an even more spectacular view).
At the center of the cosmic blob is a pair of stars, one of which is dying, that appear as one. Up until now, the scene appeared blurry and fuzzy in past images of the distant nebula. Using data from JWST's unique mid-infrared capabilities, however, we now get a much more detailed view of both the stars and intricate clumps of dust that form the rings.
Here's a comparison of the same view from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) and JWST (and again, click to enlarge to really take it in)...
"Before Webb, we weren’t able to detect most of this material, let alone observe it so clearly," said Mike Ressler, a researcher and project scientist for Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California. "With MIRI’s data, we can now comprehensively examine the turbulent nature of this nebula."
Ressler discovered the rings around NGC 1514 back in 2010 while looking at the WISE image on the left. Now a decade and a half later, he and everyone else are treated to a much more brilliant snapshot of a scene that's been forming for at least 4,000 years, according to NASA.
While that's a long time, NASA says it will continue to change over many more millennia. The dying star and its companion are in the midst of an elongated nine-year orbit, draped in an arc of dust (appears as orange) with diffraction spikes adding to the brilliance. NASA notes that one of the stars used to be several times bigger than the our Sun.
"As it evolved, it puffed up, throwing off layers of gas and dust in in a very slow, dense stellar wind," said David Jones, a senior scientist at the Institute of Astrophysics on the Canary Islands, who proved there is a binary star system at the center in 2017.
The other interesting tidbit about this scene is that it's missing carbon and smoke-like material known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. These are common traits in planetary nebulae, but neither are detected in NGC 1514, NASA says. And that bright blue star on the lower left? It's not part of the nebula, and is actually lies closer to us.
