NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope continues to amaze us with its images, including this one of distant star WR140 located in the constellation Cygnus 5,600 light-years from Earth. Captured with Webb’s Mid-Infrared (MIRI) instrument last month, this image shows bizarre rings around the star.
Astronomers state that these ripples are most likely diffraction spikes created by the telescope itself. Whatever the reasoning may be, we do know that WR140 is classified as a Wolf-Rayet star, which refers to one that has pushed an enormous amount of hydrogen into space and remains shrouded by a dust clouds. Popularity wise, these bizarre rings probably won’t surpass Amazon’s The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power anytime soon.
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This animation looks down from above the orbital plane to depict the spiraling creation of dust in the binary star system WR 140. A Wolf-Rayet star — the dense core of an aging massive star — and an O-type star orbit one another, their stellar winds colliding as they get close,” said Webb Space Telescope researchers.
