SPACE – These brightly colored streaks in space are the remnants of a massive star. This image taken by the James Webb Telescope was released by NASA on Friday, April 7. It shows the remnant of supernova Cassiopeia A (Case A), created by a stellar explosion 340 years ago. Observing Case A then represents a unique opportunity to learn more about the death of stars, as you can see in the video at the top of the article.
“Case A represents our best opportunity to examine the debris field of an exploded star and perform a kind of stellar autopsy to understand what type of star was there before and how this star exploded”said Danny Milisavljevic of Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana, principal investigator of the Webb program that captured the sightings.
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Colors that speak volumes
The incredible colors in this new image of Case A, in which infrared light is translated into wavelengths of visible light, contain a wealth of scientific information that the team is just beginning to uncover.
Outside the bubble, particularly at the top and left, are curtains of matter appearing orange and red due to the emission of hot dust. Before the massive star exploded, it had ejected gas and dust. This orange-red zone thus marks the place where the material ejected from the exploded star collides with the gas and dust present around the star before the explosion, specify in particular NASA and Esa in their press release.
Inside this outer shell are mottled bright pink filaments interspersed with tufts and knots. This represents the material of the star itself, which shines due to a mixture of various heavy elements, such as oxygen, argon and neon, as well as the emission of dust.
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Mystery around stardust
Where does cosmic dust come from? This is the question that torments many scientists and to which they may be able to answer thanks to this shot. Observations have shown that even very young galaxies in the early universe are permeated with massive amounts of dust. However, it is difficult to explain the origins of this dust without mentioning supernovae. When a star explodes, it spits through space large quantities of heavy elements which constitute precisely this dust.
“All the atoms created during the life of the star will be used to enrich the galaxy, we will thus be able to form new stars, which will contain these elements, these will perhaps form planets, life…” , recalls the astrophysicist Eric Lagadec on Twitter.
Although, at the moment, existing observations of supernovae have not been able to conclusively explain the amount of dust we see in these early galaxies, astronomers hope to make some headway by studying Case A with James Webb.
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Supernovas like the one that formed Cas A are crucial to life as we know it. They spread things like the calcium we find in our bones and the iron in our blood through interstellar space, giving rise to new generations of stars and planets.
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