James Webb snapped an incipient supernova

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James Webb snapped an incipient supernova

Stars, like us humans, do not live forever. Ok, they usually live a little longer than we do, save a few billion years, but eventually they also ‘die’. With a star it looks a lot more spectacular than with the average living being. The ‘death’ of a star is also called a supernova. Mind you, not all stars end up as supernovae. They have to be big enough for that. Roughly at least eight times as large, or as much mass, as our star. The outer shell of those stars explodes at the end of their lives. This phenomenon is caused by an implosion of the star’s core.

James Webb snaps dying star

Photos of supernovas look spectacular. James Webb, the space telescope that has been active since the summer of last year, took a picture of a dying star a few months ago. That snapshot was this week by the NASA shown to the world.

The special thing about this photo is that the star in question has not yet reached the supernova stage, but is very close to it. The resulting picture shows a special and spectacular image.

The massive stars that end in a supernova race through their life cycles. Some of those stars go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase just before becoming a supernova. Those stars are in that phase shedding their outer layers, resulting in characteristic halos of gas and dust. The star photographed by James Webb, WR 124, has 30 times the mass of the Sun and has already ejected material for 10 suns. As the ejected gas moves away from the star and cools, cosmic dust forms and glows in the infrared light detectable by Webb. That resulted in the picture below.

JamesWebb-Supernova-a
The dying star WR 124, as imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope. Source: NASAESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team.

15,000 light years

By the way, we don’t have to worry about debris from this dying star reaching our solar system. WR 124 lies 15,000 light-years from our sun, in the constellation Sagitta.

Webb’s detailed image of the dying star WR 124 shows us the short, turbulent time of transformation these stars go through.

Photo header: NASA James Webb gallery

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