NASA Releases Stunning Images Of A Dying Star Taken By James Webb Telescope
Studying planetary nebulas like this one can tell us more about the life and death of Sun-like stars, the space agency said.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has released new images of the Ring Nebula taken by James Webb Space Telescope.
New views of the Ring Nebula by the world's most powerful space telescope reveal intricate details, including a faint halo surrounding the nebula's outer layers, NASA said in a post on X (formerly Twitter).
Studying planetary nebulas like this one can tell us more about the life and death of Sun-like stars, the space agency said.
Ring Nebula Photos By Webb Telescope
"This nebula is a “planetary nebula,” named for having a planet-like appearance through small telescopes. In actuality, these objects are the remains of a star’s death throes. And while the Ring Nebula resembles a ring when seen face-on, it's more of a donut as viewed in 3D!" a tweet from Webb Telescope's official handle said.
In a blog post, NASA said that much like the Southern Ring Nebula, one of Webb’s first images, the Ring Nebula displays intricate structures of the final stages of a dying star.
“The Ring Nebula is an ideal target to unravel some of the mysteries of planetary nebulae. It is nearby, approximately 2,200 light-years away, and bright – visible with binoculars on a clear summer evening from the northern hemisphere and much of the southern," Roger Wesson of Cardiff University said in a statement.
“When we first saw the images, we were stunned by the amount of detail in them. The bright ring that gives the nebula its name is composed of about 20,000 individual clumps of dense molecular hydrogen gas, each of them about as massive as the Earth. Within the ring, there is a narrow band of emission from polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs – complex carbon-bearing molecules that we would not expect to form in the Ring Nebula," he added.
