[The Epoch Times, September 12, 2022](The Epoch Times reporter Linda compiled and reported) James .Webb Space TelescopeA mystery was discovered recently: it captured the shot of a bright starhaloIt presents a “round and square” shape instead of the common circle.
sinceWebb Space TelescopeIn the eight months since its launch, JWST has sent back a series of photos, ranging from exciting and mysterious structures to extremely ancient galaxies and dying stars, in an effort to explore the mysteries of the early formation of the universe. The observation capability of JWST isHubble Telescope100 times larger, it captures images that sometimes exceed our current understanding of the universe.
The latest photos are of the WR140 starhaloof. As image processing expert Judy Schmidt noted in a retweet of the images on Aug. 29, the halos fan out from the star’s bright white center in a spiral ring and several rays.These rings are not perfect circles, they look more like squares with rounded corners, evenastronomerI don’t know what happened.
“I think it’s just nature doing something simple, but when we’re only looking at it from one perspective, it seems impossible at first to understand that it’s a natural phenomenon,” Schmidt told Space.com, which reported the incident. strange thing. “Why is it shaped like this? Why is it so regular?”
According to Mark McCaughrean, an interdisciplinary scientist with the Webb Telescope Science Working Group, the rings are “so bizarre.”
“In this image, the six spiky blue structures are due to optical refraction due to optical diffraction from the bright star WR140,” he tweeted, “but red, curved, and quadratic. The square, layered structures actually exist in space.”
Assistant to the National Science Foundation NOIRLabastronomerRyan Lau, who led the project to collect raw data from JWST images, said “those nested ‘squircular’ rings are real,” adding that he and colleagues There is a pending paper addressing this issue that may provide more understanding of this strange ring phenomenon.
Aside from the puzzling halo, WR140 isn’t actually one, but a pair of stars: one of them isWolf-Rayet star(Wolf–Rayet), which is an old, rapidly depleting star; the other is an O-type star, which is large, bright, but short-lived.As the pair of stars orbit each other, they are produced as they approach each other every 7.94 yearscosmic dust. The dust is thrown into nearby space to form the ring structure seen here, and the JWST’s infrared capabilities can capture it.
This is just the latest of many discoveries that JWST has to offer us; while these oddly-shaped halos may not be aliens, maybe the next one will be. ◇#
Responsible editor: Ye Ziwei