NASA James Webb Space Telescope Finds Wolf-Rayet 140 Star Shelling Out Fingerprints

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope found a unique pair of stars surrounded by "fingerprint" dust rings.

The Wolf-Rayet 140 (WR-140) pair, 5,000 light-years away (per Digital Trends), may help us understand how stars are formed and the intergalactic space between them.

Two stars make up this system: an O-type star, a hot blue-white star, and an older, more massive Wolf-Rayet star. They approach one another once every eight years because of how they orbit.

The stellar winds that are produced by each star then start to interact. The massive Wolf-Rayet star sheds part of its stellar material due to this collision, creating dust.

Star Duo Forms ‘Fingerprint’ in Space, NASA’s Webb Finds

(Photo: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech)
The two stars in Wolf-Rayet 140 produce shells of dust every eight years that look like rings, as seen in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Each ring was created when the stars came close together, and their stellar winds collided, compressing the gas and forming dust.

NASA James Webb Telescope Discovers WR 140 Dust Rings

The WR 140 system has "fingerprint" dust rings, which NASA claims were recently found. The James Webb Space Telescope has now supplied a new image that supports this discovery. The 17 circular dust rings that the pair of stars created around them are permanent, even though they appear to be bright flashes or streaks.

The system consists of two stars: a Wolf-Rayet, noted for its active and energetic characteristics, and an O-type star, the biggest and hottest star.

A report that presents the information and data they learned from the inquiry was submitted by researchers to the Nature journal.

When these two powerful stars encounter, they create enormous winds consisting of particles and elements, which are then transformed into dust particles that contribute to the formation of the fingerprint rings. The WR 140 system's dust rings are remarkable since stars often eject winds and dust due to their activity.

(Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech)
This graphic shows the relative size of the Sun, upper left, compared to the two stars in the system known as Wolf-Rayet 140. The O-type star is roughly 30 times the mass of the Sun, while its companion is about ten times the mass of the Sun.

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WR140 Rings Previous Sightings

According to Space.com, the Keck Observatory regularly recorded a little portion of the outermost dust shell of WR140. The contrast between the next series of photographs revealed the acceleration.

Keck, one of the most potent telescopes globally, can only distinguish the first two concentric waves. In contrast, the James Webb Space Telescope has taken images showing 17 shells stretching into the distance at properly spaced intervals, showcasing the telescope's greater observing capabilities.

The dust of these stars, as seen by the James Webb Space Telescope, contains grains that resemble the organic, carbon-rich particles that constitute life on Earth. For Webb, this is only the beginning. Astronomers anticipate making further ground-breaking findings about WR140 in the coming months and years.

Because they are assemblages of pure energy and power, stars are weird things. The Sun, the greatest star in the system, is the most glaring example. The most recent discovery by Webb advances our knowledge of the galaxy's stars and offers more information on the techniques and pursuits that result in unexpected phenomena like these dust rings.