Posted on by Evan Gough

The Webb Shows Us Where Cosmic Dust Comes From

Concentric rings of dust form around the pair of binary stars named Wolf-Rayet 140. The dust is formed when the stellar winds from the stars slam into each other every few years. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech

Carbon-rich cosmic dust comes from different sources and spreads out into space, where it’s necessary for life and for the formation of rocky planets like ours. When astronomers aim their telescopes at objects in the sky, they often have to contend with this cosmic dust that obscures their targets and confounds their observations.

One reason the JWST was built is to see through some of this dust with its infrared vision and unlock new insights into astrophysical processes. In new work, the JWST was tasked with observing the dust itself.

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Posted on by Nancy Atkinson

These Bizarre Concentric Rings in Space are Real, Not an Optical Illusion. New Data from JWST Explains What’s Happening

James Webb Space Telescope image of partial dust shells surrounding WR 140. Credit: JWST/MIRI/Judy Schmidt.

Back in August, an early release image from the James Webb Space Telescope revealed a bizarre sight: as many as 17 concentric rings encircling a binary star system, called Wolf-Rayet 140. Was it a spiral nebula, an alien megastructure or just an optical illusion?

The answer, revealed today, is dust. A new paper published in Nature Astronomy explains how stellar winds in this odd binary system blasts dust into near-perfect concentric circles every time the two stars come close to each other in their eccentric orbits.

Continue reading “These Bizarre Concentric Rings in Space are Real, Not an Optical Illusion. New Data from JWST Explains What’s Happening”