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Dying Star's Final Moments Captured by Webb Telescope
24 Jan
Summary
- Webb Telescope captured new, detailed images of the Helix Nebula.
- The nebula shows a dying star shedding gas and dust.
- Dying stars recycle material, seeding future stars and planets.
New images from the James Webb Space Telescope reveal the dramatic final stages of the Helix Nebula, a dying star located 650 light-years away. These detailed photographs showcase blistering winds of hot gas from the star as they interact with colder shells of dust and gas previously shed. This provides a vivid preview of Earth's potential fate in approximately five billion years, when our Sun will swell into a Red Giant before collapsing.
While the images capture the end of a star's life, they also illustrate a crucial cosmic process. Nasa highlights that dying stars effectively recycle their material back into the universe. This cosmic dust and gas act as building blocks, seeding the formation of new generations of stars and planets. The Helix Nebula, also known as the 'Eye of God Nebula,' is one of the closest dying stars to Earth, making these observations particularly significant for understanding stellar evolution.
