Two Webb Space Telescope instruments have captured the latest image of the planetary nebula, cataloged as NGC 3132, also known as the Southern Ring Nebula or the Eight-Burst Nebula, about 2,500 meters from Earth. Light-years away, there are two stars in the center. The fainter one is a white dwarf star. Scientists speculate that it may have a mass 8 times that of the sun during its lifetime.
The Webb Space Telescope has clearly captured the gas and dust ejected from dead stars, helping researchers understand the molecular structures that make up nebulae and even build three-dimensional models. This photo shows the Southern Ring Nebula almost facing Earth, but if it could be rotated to the side, it would look like the bottoms of two very close bowls.
▲ The Southern Ring Nebula taken by the Webb Space Telescope, the left is the near-infrared band, and the right is the mid-infrared band. (Source: NASA)
Left image taken by the Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the bright star in the middle is very bright, and even diverges into starbursts, and the planetary nebula is surrounded by extremely fine light from the gaps of gas and dust, like sunlight passing through the gaps in the clouds . The right image, taken by the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), shows for the first time the second dead star surrounded by gas and dust, a white dwarf; the brighter one is still in the final stages of stellar evolution and may also eject planetary nebulae in the future. At the same time, bright stars can affect the appearance of the nebula. As the pair of stars and the white dwarf orbit each other, they “churn” the gas and dust, creating an asymmetrical nebula pattern.
Because the planetary nebula has been around for a while, watching it is like watching a slow-motion movie. Each shell ejected by the star in the past allows researchers to accurately measure the gas and dust inside. The dust gradually dissipates from the concentration until it becomes the interstellar medium, where Interstellar travel billions of years later to become the raw material for new stars or planets.
▲ The bright light in the yellow circle is the newly discovered galaxy.
In addition to NGC 3132, there is what looks like a light in the upper left of the photo. This is actually a side view of a galaxy that was not expected to be seen when the Webb Space Telescope took it, on the grounds that none of the past photos showed it. There is a galaxy there, and now it has been revealed in the Webb Space Telescope image, and it is believed that there will be research papers on this galaxy in the future.
(This article is reproduced with permission from the Taipei Planetarium; the source of the first image: NASA)
Further reading:
New technological knowledge, updated from time to time