Science Events About Research Courses BECOME A MEMBER Login

 

Science News
& Faculty Articles

 

JWST Image of Rings Around Star WR140 Leaves Astrophysicists Baffled!

With its mid-infrared instrument (MIRI), the James Webb Space Telescope captured the star WR140 surrounded by strange concentric shells that gradually fade away.(Image credit: NASA/ESA /CSA /Ryan Lau /JWST ERS Team /Judy Schmidt)


By Dr. Inés Urdaneta, Physicist at Resonance Science Foundation

An image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in July 2022 showing a star named Wolf-Rayet 140 (WR 140) surrounded by regular ripple-like circles that gradually fade away, was released on Twitter by scientist Judy Schmidt. Star WR140 is in the Cygnus constellation and resides around 5,600 light-years from Earth. The image ignited a torrent of comments, making astronomers and astrophysicists scratch their heads over this unexplained observation.

Wolf-Rayet stars are rare, only 600 have been found, and they’re very short-lived, generating powerful winds that push huge amounts of gas and dust into space, while loosing most of their mass in the process. In this...

Continue Reading...
Close

50% Complete

Two Step

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.