The central star forming the Southern Ring Nebula is dying, emitting the "messy" red dust that forms its titular rings, and researchers now understand the phenomenon visible through a high-powered telescope is caused by multiple stars, not just one.
A team of 70 researchers found there were two or more "unseen" stars that created the circular shapes around the nebula.
A nebula, as described by NASA, is a term for a cloud of dust and gas in space formed from the explosion of a dying star.
The Southern Ring Nebula is about 2,000 light-years away from Earth.
The team behind the research, led by Orsola De Marco of Macquarie University in Sydney, analyzed 10 of NASA's James Webb Telescope images and existing data from the European Space Agency’s Gaia observatory.
The discovery was published in Nature Astronomy on Dec. 8.
"With Webb, it’s like we were handed a microscope to examine the universe," De Marco said in NASA's press release."There is so much detail in its images. We approached our analysis much like forensic scientists to rebuild the scene. "
The Southern Ring Nebula is aging, which is why researchers are interested in how it was created and what is happening. The processes of the dying star created red gas forming the nebula, making for what researchers call a "messy death."
"We think all that gas and dust we see thrown all over the place must have come from that one star, but it was tossed in very specific directions by the companion stars," Joel Kastner, a team member from the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York, said in NASA's press release.
The team was able to pinpoint the mass of stars that created the nebula, which shows the central star was nearly three times bigger than the sun at the time. After it started shedding layers of gas and dust, which happens as stars age, the team was able to see how many stars created the shapes of the Southern Ring Nebula.
"Knowing the initial mass is a critical piece of evidence that helped the team reconstruct the scene and project how the shapes in this nebula may have been created," the NASA website reads.
The team believes the central star interacted with one or two small companion stars which spread out the dusty red gas seen circling around.
By understanding how the nebula got its rings, researchers can apply the evidence to other systems in deep space answering questions on how stars are created and why the dust forms circles.
James Webb Telescope: More stars created Southern Ring Nebula - CTV News
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