2,500 years ago, one of space’s most beautiful features was born: the Southern Ring Nebula. The nebula was clearly imaged by the Webb Space Telescope earlier this year, and now astronomers think they know exactly how a star’s violent explosion occurred, leaving the elegant nebula in its wake.
The star carrying the nebula was about three times the size of the Sun and 500 million years old. It’s very young, star-wise. Our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old Another 5 billion must live.
About 2,500 years ago, Confucius and Buddha were still alive. The Peloponnesian Wars were about to begin. And somewhere in those intervening years, a star 2,000 light-years away expired, spewing gas outwards from a newly formed white dwarf.
The star in the Southern Ring Nebula is not dead yet, but its ejection of gas is a major turning point in the star’s life. White dwarfs are the end of the stellar game. They form when stars exhaust their nuclear energy and begin to slowly cool.
Using images from the Webb Space Telescope and smart accounts and Mathematical modeling by the research teamMoments before the Southern Ring Nebula’s starlight display is now visible It is examined in detail.
Various Webb filters stand out Side of the light source, therefore It may look like parts of the nebula Pearly or translucent red while others appear blue or orange, depending on the imageAge. web Choose image processors Highlight different aspects of things in order To highlight different elements – hot gas, For exampleor major factories within larger systems.
A team of 70 astronomers worked together to identify up to five stars (only two of which are now visible) that might be involved in the stellar occultation. Their investigation into the star’s death published Today in Natural Astronomy.
said Ursula DiMarco, the Macquarie University astronomer in charge of the study. Senior author at the university Release.
The team’s playthrough of the nebula’s origins was made possible by extremely precise measurements of the brightest star (the interstellar star, if you will) in Webb iWizard. Webb’s data allowed researchers to accurately measure his mass and progress in his life.This, in turn, allowed them to derive the mass from the faint central star before it loses its matter and creates colour sodium
Webb imaged the southern loop with two instruments, NIRcam and MIRI. Webb’s images were complemented by data from the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope, the San Pedro de Martire Telescope, and NASA’s Gaia and Hubble Space Telescopes.
only two of It is believed that stars are involved in this cosmic outrage visible in Webhe is Representative color shot from the nebula with NIRcam. The bright star in the center of the nebula is associated with a star that released so much material that it became a white dwarf. This shrunken (and exhausted) star lies faintly along the 8-hour diffraction peak from the bright center star in the photo above.
Astronomers believe that at least one star has interacted with the fainter star (star 1 in the pictured timeline). below) as the latter swelled, preparing to expel its gas and become a white dwarf.
According to the team, this mysterious star (Star 3) released jets of material as it interacted with the dying star and covered the fading star with dust before merging with the dwarf. Star 2 in the illustration is now the bright spot at the nebula’s center – a relatively stable number, given its lack of explosive activity or outgassing.
Another star (or “party girl”, in Space Telescope Science Institute Measurement An astrophysicist gone wrong) kicked the gas and dust emitted from its predecessor, causing undulating ripples in the matter. Then another star (star 5 in the panels above) orbited the light show and produced the ring system that surrounds the nebula.
According to the researchers’ calculations, you can consider the white dwarf near the nebula’s core as host to a party that raged so much and was lost long before the party was over. But the star made everyone have a good time while she was ready, and that’s what kept the party going.
Joel Kastner, an astrophysicist at Rochester Institute of Technology, said in StScI Release.
Researchers believe that the same methods that revealed details of the birth of the Southern Ring Nebula could help unpack the birth of other nebulae, as well as the astrophysical forces at work in star interactions.
The images revealing this interstellar landscape were released in June. Only now have the researchers had time to examine the data and offer their interpretation.
So consider the pictures you have I have seen From Web so farThey all have their own stories, which will (hopefully) be told in detail soon.
More: Are the colors in Webb Telescope images ‘wrong’?