James Webb explores details of the Ring Nebula – 08/21/2023 – Science

More images of the famous Ring Nebula, with its structures from the final stages of a dying star, were released by the team at the James Webb Telescope, this Monday (21).

The images produced by the telescope help researchers to obtain more information about this phase of the life cycle of a star similar to the Sun, and also about the formation and evolution of nebulae like this one.

“Previously, planetary nebulae were thought to be simple, round objects with a single dying star at their centre,” Roger Wesson, a researcher at Cardiff University, told NASA’s blog. “Modern observations, however, show that most planetary nebulae exhibit impressive complexity. This raises the question: How does a spherical star create such intricate and delicate non-spherical structures?”

Wesson is betting that a companion star helps explain such a shape.

The researcher said that the nebulae were so named when they were still observed by small telescopes, in which they appeared to have a blurred appearance, similar to planets.

“The Ring Nebula is an ideal target for unlocking some of the mysteries of planetary nebulae. It’s close, approximately 2,200 light-years away, and it’s bright—visible with binoculars on a clear summer night in the northern hemisphere and much of the northern hemisphere. of the South,” said Wesson.

The researcher described what the images produced by Webb allowed to identify. According to him, the central ring is composed of about 20,000 individual dense clumps of molecular hydrogen, each with a mass approximately equal to that of Earth. He also says that, inside the ring, complex carbon molecules (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons) are emitted, which scientists would not expect to find there.

Wesson also mentioned the curious pointed formations that point in the opposite direction of the central star. Even though prominent in the James Webb images, they were previously faint in the images formed by the Hubble Space Telescope.

“A startling revelation was the presence of up to ten regularly spaced concentric features within this faint halo. [fora do círculo central mais brilhante]. These arcs must have formed every 280 years or so, as the central star was shedding its outer layers.”

“When a single star evolves into a planetary nebula, there is no process that we know of that has that kind of time period. Instead, these rings suggest that there must be a companion star in the system, orbiting at a similar distance to Pluto. is from our Sun. As the dying star was releasing its atmosphere, the companion star shaped the flow and sculpted it. No previous telescope had the sensitivity and spatial resolution to discover this subtle effect,” Wesson explained.