(ORDO NEWS) — A new image from the James Webb telescope shows many dust rings. This is reported by the press service of NASA.
Astronomers have counted at least 17 rings around the double star. This pair, Wolf-Rayet 140, is five thousand light years away from Earth.
Such rings arise due to the interaction of stellar winds of nearby luminaries. Stellar winds consist of streams of matter flowing into space.
When the flows meet, the gas is compressed.
Since Wolf-Rayet stars are massive (30 and 10 times larger than the Sun), they emit many heavy elements into space, including carbon, and when compressed, dust is formed from it.
Since the orbit of this pair of stars is elongated, and they approach every 8 years, characteristic “annual rings” are formed, which are clearly visible in the infrared.
For the formation of dust to begin, the components of the system must approach at a distance approximately equal to the distance between the Sun and the Earth.
“The image also shows how sensitive this telescope is. Previously, we could only see two dust rings with ground-based telescopes. Now we see at least 17 of them,” astronomers comment on the photo.
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