The James Webb Reveals an Ancient and Mysterious Dance
A set of perfect rings reveal a pair of dying stars
Wolf-Rayet stars are rare and fascinating things. Unlike most other stars they burn helium, not hydrogen, and as result glow at enormous temperatures. Indeed one of them — Wolf-Rayet 102 — is the hottest known star in the universe, glowing at over two hundred thousand degrees Kelvin. Even those that are slightly cooler are still intensely bright: outshining the Sun a thousand times over.
Perhaps natural, then, that a Wolf-Rayet star should capture the attention of the James Webb Space Telescope. Astronomers recently directed it to examine WR-140, one partner of a binary system lying some five thousand light years away.
The result is an unusual image: something that looks more like the artificial distortions of a camera lens than a real photograph of a star. In the centre of the image are the stars themselves, shining with an intense brightness. But extending far around it are rings; ripples of gas stretching far away into space.
These rings, the researchers found, are made of carbon and silicon dust. They likely come from the outer layers of the star: a kind of sooty residue left over as it burns helium and other heavier elements. At regular intervals — roughly once every eight years —…
