Weber Telescope reveals the hidden dance of cosmic gas in the farewell of the Death Star – scienceblog.com

It has been a celestial scene that has attracted the interest of astronomers since the 18th century, thanks to NASA’s James Webb space telescope. The powerful observatory captures unprecedented details of NGC 1514, a planetary nebula where explosive death thros of dying stars form a fascinating ring that is only visible in infrared light.

Weber’s Miri (Miri) transformed our understanding of this cosmic structure, revealing once thought to be complex, “fuzzy” clumps arranged in tangled patterns and a network of holes where faster materials punched through slow-moving gases.

“Before Weber, we couldn’t detect most of the material, let alone observe it clearly,” said Mike Ressler, a researcher and project scientist at Webb Miri at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in NASA, California. “With Miri’s data, we can now fully study the turbulence of this nebula.”

The dramatic scene has been at least 4,000 years and will continue to transform thousands of years. In the heart of the nebula, the two stars are a single highlight, surrounded by Weber’s characteristic diffraction spikes. These stars run to each other every nine years, a cosmic waltz that shapes the unique hourglass form of the nebula.

David Jones, a senior scientist at the Canary Islands Institute of Astrophysics, confirmed the binary galaxy in 2017, explaining the stratigraphic process: “As it evolves, it expands, expands, discarding gas and dust at a very slow, dense, huge wind direction.” Once the larger star drives out its outer layer, only its heat, the compact white dwarf core is left, greatly changing the stellar wind.

The three-dimensional structure of the nebula is tilted by 60 degrees to our sight, creating a can that looks like a poured in. However, scientists believe that it is more likely to be an hourglass, with the end cut off. The subtle V-shaped profile reveals its clamped waist, while the translucent orange clouds between the rings give the nebula its overall form.

“When the star is at the peak of losing material, the companions can become very, very close,” Jones noted. “This interaction may lead to shapes you wouldn’t expect. This interaction may form these rings rather than creating spheres.”

Weber’s exquisite sensitivity reveals surprising details about the composition of nebula. “We think the rings are composed primarily of very small dust-proof grains,” Reisler said. “When these grains are hit by UV light from white dwarf stars, they heat up slightly, which we think makes them warm enough to be detected by Webb in mid-infrared light.”

Perhaps equally interesting is what Webber didn’t find. Carbon and smog-like polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are clearly absent in NGC 1514, and are common in planetary nebula. This simpler chemical makeup allows the central star to reach further light from the central star, illuminating the faint, cloud-like rings around it.

NGC 1514 occupies an important position in astronomy history. When William Herschel observed in 1790, he pointed out that this was the first deep sky object that was truly cloudy rather than separable into individual stars. With Weber’s revolutionary ability, astronomers can now see the farewell of this universe with unprecedented clarity.

Located on Earth in the Taurus sign, about 1,500 light years, NGC 1514 continues to reveal the complex beauty of star death, and as it approaches the end of its current life span, it glimpses the distant future of our own sun.