NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has once again captured a stunning image from our Solar System, this time showcasing a unique pair of Wolf-Rayet stars known as Apep. Wolf-Rayet stars are massive, hot stars in the later stages of their life, rapidly losing mass due to strong stellar winds. The James Webb Space Telescope’s observations revealed coiled shells of dust surrounding the pair, a phenomenon never before seen. Previous data collected by other telescopes had only shown a single dust shell.
What sets this observation apart is the presence of a third star in the system, confirmed by Webb’s new data to be gravitationally bound to the other two stars. This massive supergiant star creates “slices” in the dust shells emitted over the past 700 years, resulting in a unique visual effect. NASA describes the process as the third star cutting through the dust, creating a V shape from about 10 o’clock to 2 o’clock when viewed.
Named after the Egyptian god of chaos, Apep may seem to move slowly, but the swirling dust clouds around the Wolf-Rayet stars travel at incredible speeds. NASA notes that these dust-producing stars are not simply drifting through space but are moving at speeds of 1,200 to 2,000 miles per second, contributing to the dense dust clouds visible in the image.
Combined data from Webb and the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope in Chile revealed that the two Wolf-Rayet stars in the Apep system pass each other every 190 years. During each close pass lasting 25 years, the stars produce and release amorphous carbon dust into space.
For more information on NASA’s discoveries, visit their website.
If stories and artists like this matter to you, consider becoming a Colossal Member to support independent arts publishing. Benefits include ad-free browsing, saving favorite articles, 15% off in the Colossal Shop, exclusive newsletters, and contributing 1% for art supplies in K-12 classrooms.
