[Lex Computer & Tech Group/LCTG] News from JWST

[Ted Kochanski]

from Space.com

James Webb Space Telescope spots huge star about to go supernova
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-star-soon-go-supernova-photos

By Mike Wall published about 18 hours ago
The star is about 30 times more massive than our sun and has already shed
10 suns' worth of gas and dust.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has just given us some gorgeous
views of a giant star's dying days.
On Tuesday (March 14), NASA released JWST images of WR 124, a rare
Wolf-Rayet star that lies about 15,000 light-years from Earth, in the
constellation Sagittarius.

"Massive stars race through their life cycles, and only some of them go
through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before going supernova, making Webb's
detailed observations of this rare phase valuable to astronomers," NASA
officials wrote in a description of the images(opens in new tab), which
JWST snapped in June 2022, just after becoming operational...
"Dust is integral to the workings of the universe: It shelters forming
stars, gathers together to help form planets, and serves as a platform for
molecules to form and clump together — including the building blocks of
life on Earth," NASA officials wrote in the image description. "Despite the
many essential roles that dust plays, there is still more dust in the
universe than astronomers' current dust-formation theories can explain."

JWST's observations could shed light on this mysterious "dust budget
surplus," they added. That's because cosmic dust is best studied in
infrared wavelengths, the type of light that JWST is optimized to observe.

"Before Webb, dust-loving astronomers simply did not have enough detailed
information to explore questions of dust production in environments like WR
124, and whether the dust grains were large and bountiful enough to survive
the supernova and become a significant contribution to the overall dust
budget," NASA officials wrote. "Now those questions can be investigated
with real data."

Ted
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