The James Webb telescope snapped an image on Tuesday of a star on the cusp of death. NASA shared the photograph that Webb had managed to obtain of the star WR 124 moments before it became a supernova during the South of Southwest conference held in Austin, Texas:
Cosmic spring is in the air! The latest image from @NASAWebb features a blooming Wolf-Rayet star, 15,000 light-years away. This rare phase is as fleeting as the cherry blossom it resembles. Luckily, Webb can study its "petals" of dust in detail: https://t.co/z9dlzgKmAh #SXSW pic.twitter.com/sAOrZkX0Wl
— NASA (@NASA) March 14, 2023
As explained by the aerospace institution in a press release, this "rare sight of a Wolf-Rayet star was one of the first observations made by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope" after its launch into space in June 2022. Thanks to the telescope's powerful infrared instruments, the star, which is 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Saggitta, was captured glowing purple, resembling a cherry blossom.
The origin of cosmic dust interests NASA
This is an interesting finding for NASA. Massive stars, the agency explains, "race through their lifecycles, and only some of them go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before going supernova." This makes the image obtained by the space telescope very valuable for astronomers, since this transformation is the last step before the star becomes a supernova. Information on this topic has been quite limited, until now.
The image also shows the cosmic dust emitted by the star during its transformation. This was a very important discovery for the space community since its origin is of great interest to astronomers:
The origin of cosmic dust that can survive a supernova blast and contribute to the universe’s overall 'dust budget' is of great interest to astronomers for multiple reasons. Dust is integral to the workings of the universe: It shelters forming stars, gathers together to help form planets, and serves as a platform for molecules to form and clump together – including the building blocks of life on Earth. Despite the many essential roles that dust plays, there is still more dust in the universe than astronomers’ current dust-formation theories can explain. The universe is operating with a dust budget surplus.
