Two stars both alike in dignity, in the fair Southern Ring planetary nebula where we lay our scene...

Here our “star-crossed lovers” are actually a dying star expelling gas and dust, in orbit with a younger star that is helping to change the shape of this nebula’s intricate rings by creating turbulence. The James Webb Space Telescope can see through the gas and dust in unprecedented detail.

On the left is an image from Webb’s NIRCam instrument, which saw this nebula in the near-infrared. On the right is the same nebula as seen by Webb’s MIRI instrument in the mid-infrared. The stars – and their layers of light – steal more attention in the NIRCam image, while glowing dust plays the lead in the MIRI image. In thousands of years, these delicate, gaseous layers will dissipate into surrounding space.

The Southern Ring nebula is called a planetary nebula. Despite “planet” in the name, which comes from how these objects first appeared to astronomers observing them hundreds of years ago, these are shells of dust and gas shed by dying Sun-like stars. The new details from Webb will transform our understanding of how stars evolve and influence their environments.

Read more about the new Webb observations of this object: nasa.gov/webbfirstimages/

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

Image description

The image is split down the middle, showing two views of the Southern Ring Nebula. Both feature black backgrounds speckled with tiny bright stars and distant galaxies. Both show the planetary nebula as a misshapen oval that is slightly angled from top left to bottom right and takes up the majority of each image. At left, the near-infrared image shows a bright white star at the center with long diffraction spikes. Large, transparent teal and orange ovals, which are shells ejected by the unseen central star, surround it. At right, the mid-infrared image shows two stars at the center very close to one another. The one at left is red, the smaller one at right is light blue. The blue star has tiny triangles around it. A large transparent red oval surrounds the central stars. From that extend shells in a mix of colors, which are red to the left and right and teal to the top and bottom. Overall, the oval shape of the planetary nebula appears slightly smaller than the one seen at left.

Loading comments...

Loading contexts...