The James Webb Space Telescope has captured an extremely rare image, the prelude to a supernova. This is Wolf-Rayet 124, a now dying star that when it was born a few thousand years ago was 30 times more massive than our Sun and is about (in astronomical terms) to collapse in a stellar explosion.
The James Webb, as the Hubble already did, is going to give us some spectacular images of the deep Universe. In the one he deals with, we see clouds of dust, intense plumes of color that correspond to the final crackles of a dying star. At the center of this flower-like structure is a bluish-white star. Because it is about to collapse into a black hole, it burns hotter and generates powerful winds of gas, before disappearing forever.
The prelude to a supernova
The scientists have published the new snapshot during the Conference South by Southwest which is being held this week in Austin, Texas. The event included a panel of experts from NASA and the European Space Agency to discuss the latest scientific discoveries from James Webb, the most advanced space telescope in history that has impressive ‘eyes’, thanks to its 18 hexagons that form the primary mirror of 6.5 meters, almost triple that of Hubble.
“This is Carl Sagan’s concept of stardust, the fact that the iron in our blood and the calcium in our bones were literally forged inside a star that exploded billions of years ago.”said NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn at the conference. “That’s what we’re seeing in this new image: that dust is spreading through the cosmos and will eventually create planets. And that’s how we got here.”.
The Webb was built precisely to capture the earliest periods of the deep Universe. Its primary mirror is not only enormous in size, but can detect invisible light at infrared wavelengths. Saying that the large amount of dust and gas in space obscures the view of extremely distant and inherently dim light sources, but infrared waves can penetrate through those clouds.
The star in the image, Wolf-Rayet 124, is located about 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius. It is enveloped in a cocoon of gas and dust, layers broken off from the star mixed with elements found inside a star like carbon. According to the researchers, so far material equivalent to 10 suns has been shed.
And it will continue to do so until it becomes a Supernova. His death will not be useless and will end up giving life. New stellar objects in a process of “stardust” as defined by the charismatic astronomer and scientific popularizer, Carl Sagan.
