NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured new infrared images of the Ring Nebula, one of the best-known examples of a planetary nebula, the agency reported on Monday.
Much like the Southern Ring Nebula, one of Webb’s first images, the Ring Nebula displays intricate structures from the final stages of a dying star.
See also — James Webb Telescope reveals new images of Jupiter
According to Roger Wesson of Cardiff University, this phase in the life cycle of a Sun-like star and the telescope’s observations provide scientists with valuable information about the formation and evolution of these celestial objects, suggesting a key role for binary companions.
“The James Webb Space Telescope observed the well-known Ring Nebula in unprecedented detail. Formed by a star shedding its outer layers as it runs out of fuel, the Ring Nebula is an archetypal planetary nebula,” NASA said in a statement.
“Formerly, planetary nebulae were thought to be simple, round objects with a single dying star at the center. They were named for their fuzzy, planet-like appearance through small telescopes.”
“Just a few thousand years ago, this star was still a red giant that was losing most of its mass. As a final goodbye, the hot core now ionizes or heats up this expelled gas and the nebula responds with colored light emission,” he explains.
Unraveling the Ring Nebula
“The Ring Nebula is an ideal target for unlocking some of the mysteries of planetary nebulae. It is close, approximately 2,200 light-years away from Earth, and is bright and visible with binoculars on a clear summer night in the northern hemisphere and much of the southern hemisphere,” said the researcher.
Observations of the Ring Nebula were made by the following equipment: NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), which is a near-infrared camera, and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), Webb’s medium-infrared instrument, which allowed researchers to study it in unprecedented spatial conditions.
While the new NIRCam image shows details of the inner ring’s filament structure, MIRI’s new Ring Nebula image reveals details in the concentric features in the outer regions of the nebula’s ring.
“When we first saw the images, we were blown away by the amount of detail in them. The glowing ring that gives the nebula its name is made up of about 20,000 individual clumps of dense molecular hydrogen gas, each the mass of Earth,” he noted.
The main shell contains a thin ring of emission-enhanced carbon-based molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.
“Outside the bright ring, we see curious ‘thorns’ pointing directly away from the central star, which are prominent in the infrared but were only faintly visible in the Hubble Space Telescope images. We think this could be due to molecules that can form in the shadows of the densest parts of the ring, where they are shielded from intense direct radiation from the hot central star.”
Still according to him, images from the MIRI instrument provided a sharper and clearer view of the faint molecular halo outside the bright ring.
“A startling revelation was the presence of up to ten regularly spaced concentric features within this faint halo. These arcs must have formed every 280 years, as the central star was shedding its outer layers. When a single star evolves into a planetary nebula, there is no process that we know of that has that kind of time period,” explains the researcher.
Instead, he said, these rings suggest there must be a companion star in the system, orbiting as far from the central star as Pluto is from our Sun.
“As the dying star sheds its atmosphere, the companion star shaped the outflow and sculpted it. No previous telescope had the sensitivity and spatial resolution to discover this subtle effect.”
According to Wesson, modern observations, however, show that most planetary nebulae exhibit breathtaking complexity.
“This raises the question: How did a spherical star form a nebula as structured and complicated as the Ring Nebula? A little help from a fellow binary could very well be part of the answer,” he concludes.
PHOTOS — See more images taken by the James Webb Telescope
Source: CNN Brasil
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