Par Timothée L’Angevin
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It’s the telescope James Webb who offers us this marvel. Tuesday, March 14, 2023, the Nasa revealed an image of a star regarding to explode in supernova. It is WR 124, a Wolf-Rayet type star (stars at the end of their life, very hot, very luminous and massive), located 15,000 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Sagittarius.
At the time the picture was taken (June 2022), the star is in the relatively brief phase (regarding a million years) of the end of its life before its total explosion. It sheds its outer layer by expelling the matter surrounding its core in the form of stellar winds, hence this impression of an image of a cherry blossom tree. It has 30 times the mass of the Sun and has already lost 10 suns of matter.
“Cosmic Dust”
“As the ejected gas moves away from the star and cools, cosmic dust forms and glows in the infrared light detectable by James Webb,” says ESA (European Space Agency), which helped develop the telescope with NASA.
The detailed image of WR 124 promises future discoveries that will reveal mysteries long shrouded in cosmic dust, NASA enthuses.
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