James Webb recorded concentric rings of dust around two stars  

The capabilities of the most powerful space telescope are amazing

ESA announced that the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was able to record an unusual phenomenon where rings of dust formed around two stars, like the rings we find inside tree trunks. The image shows 17 concentric rings of dust particles surrounding the two Wolf-Rayet 140 stars.

This type of binary star is rare in our galaxy as we have detected only 600 such pairs. Wolf-Rayet is the only one as far as we know that has these rings and it is probably due to their peculiar orbit which is elongated rather than circular.

Each ring was formed when the two stars came too close to each other and the stellar winds met, compressing the gas and forming the dust. The orbits of the stars bring them together once every eight years. As with the rings of a tree, dust rings are a sign of the passage of time and tell us how many years this phenomenon has been taking place.

Beyond analyzing the phenomenon, the image is an excellent demonstration of JWST’s capabilities, as until now, with ground-based telescopes, astronomers could only see two rings of dust around Wolf-Rayet 140.

The research was published in Nature