TIts eerie cosmic scene, appropriately named the Red Spider Nebula, located approximately 3,000 light-years from Earth, was captured in unprecedented detail by the James Webb Space Telescope, and recently released online. Planetary nebulae like the Red Spider occur when some stars are close to death. These nebulae are made up of outer layers of gas ejected by dying stars, which emit ultraviolet light from their fizzing cores that have been exposed. This gives planetary nebulae their characteristic glow.
Such a stunning spectacle is only temporary – on a larger cosmic scale, that is, it lasts only tens of thousands of years. “The planetary nebula phase in the life of a star is as fleeting as it is beautiful,” it said in a recent statement. notes.
The image was captured by JWST's ultra-sensitive near-infrared camera, which collects light invisible to the naked eye and can discern the faint glow of some of the most distant and oldest objects discovered in our Universe. At the center of this nebula portrait we see a dying nebula star whose surface temperature is up to 50 times hotter than the sun.
The Hubble Space Telescope team released an image of the Red Spider Nebula in 2001 that was taken at shorter optical wavelengths, but now infrared images provide a much clearer look at this creepy crawler. For example, the dying star in the Hubble image appears bluer and dimmer compared to the fiery red star in the JWST image. you can figure it out “a blanket of hot dust surrounding the central star.”
Now scientists can also see entire spider “legs” or lobes of the nebula. recently reported V Astrophysical Journal. These bubble-like appendages are about 3 light years across and have exploded with gas from the center of the nebula over millennia.
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Main image: ESA/Webb, NASA and CSA, J.H. Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology)
