NASA scientists, giddy to unveil the new image from the James Webb Space Telescope at an event earlier this week, beamed with delight. Here it is, they said: a dying star. It had stripped off its outer layers, a sea foam of molecular hydrogen. But for doomsayers around the world, gazing at this planetary nebula some 2,500 light-years away may not have inspired celebratory feelings—rather, a premonition of what’s to come. Perhaps Joel Achenbach, a reporter for the Washington Post, felt it too. “Are we sad that the star is dying?” asked the experts during a press conference broadcast on Tuesday. Laughter ensued. But it’s easy to internalize the story of the Southern Ring Nebula as the fate of the sun itself — written, well, in the stars. SEE ALSO: Webb and Hubble images of the Carina nebula show stunning views of the universe Tweet may have been deleted (opens in new tab) In the last six months since Webb’s launch into space, NASA has promised that this telescope would open up the universe with its penetrating vision and scientific capabilities, bringing to humanity secrets of how it all began. Astrophysicists who saw sneak previews of the first images told reporters they got chills or an “ugly scream” as some of the first galaxies to exist came into focus. However, perhaps just as exciting as the origin story is the answer to how this all ends. The dying star whistles. Roof… Fusk… Poof… each successive ring of clouds withers the star to its core, a white dwarf of carbon and oxygen. It will get cold. Then the light goes out. Unlike giant stars that explode in supernovae and collapse into a black hole, a medium-sized star like the one that creates a planetary nebula runs out of nuclear fuel and suffers a more tortured end. “It’s not just any star — it’s a star that looks a lot like the sun,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, “at least as the sun will be in 5 billion years when the sun dies. “ “It’s not just any star—it’s a star that looks a lot like the sun, at least what the sun will be like in 5 billion years when the sun dies.” The photo, among the first to be released from the $10 billion space observatory, looks like scientists pointed the telescope at just the right moment to catch a cataclysmic event. And indeed, the 10,000 years or so of this phase is but a moment compared to the 13.8 billion years of the universe. Tweet may have been deleted (opens in new tab) Finding it, however, was no joke. Astronomers have known about the Southern Ring Nebula, also known as NGC 3132, since before pasteurized milk. As scientific knowledge advanced, they came to better understand planetary nebulae (a confusing misnomer because they have nothing to do with planets), as the deadly vortex of medium-sized stars. Scientists have discovered a few thousand of them in the Milky Way. The late British astronomer David S. Evans even suspected in 1968 that at the core of this nebula there were actually two stars, although one should be hidden by gas and dust. The revelation of Webb’s photo, 54 years later, is the ability to see the faintest star—the nebula’s true source—in full detail with the telescope’s mid-infrared instrument. NASA scientists marveled at the intricate detail on display. At the outer edges are bright, straight spikes of light. These are spotlights from the central stars, like those biblical representations of God, the sunbeams pouring through parting clouds after a storm. The European Space Agency has released the highest-resolution image of the sun and its corona ever taken in March 2022. Credits: ESA / NASA / Solar Orbiter / EUI Team / Data Processing: E. Kraaikamp (ROB) The sun is halfway to the fate of the Southern Ring, said Paul Sutter, a research professor at Stony Brook University and author of How to Die in Space. Researchers have calculated the age of the sun by observing all kinds of stars at different intervals. Think of it as taking snapshots of people at different stages of life, Sutter says: babies being born, Little League games, weddings, illness and after death. These observations are combined with knowledge of the physics that occurs in the core of the sun. “It turns out our sun is middle-aged. She’s going through a midlife crisis right now. She just bought a Corvette and she’s worried about her retirement fund. It’s right there.” “It turns out that our sun is middle-aged,” Satter said. “She’s going through a midlife crisis right now. She just bought a Corvette and she’s worried about her retirement fund. It’s right there.” The image of the Southern Ring Nebula captured in December 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope, the visible-light predecessor of the James Webb Space Telescope, lacks the intricate details revealed in the new images. Credit: NASA / The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI / AURA / NASA) In astronomy, looking further away translates into observing the past, because light and other forms of radiation must travel incredible distances to reach us. It is understood that the Southern Ring’s light show has already ended, its white dwarf can no longer illuminate it. But in all likelihood, it’s probably ongoing, albeit fainter, says Rodolfo Montez, who studies dying sun-like stars at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. Using the Hubble Space Telescope, Webb’s visible-light predecessor, planetary nebula experts have found so many irregular, non-spherical shapes among these celestial structures, influenced by a second central star, that they wonder if the extra star is actually a basic ingredient. for their creation. “It’s called the binary hypothesis, which suggests that all stars in binary systems give rise to planetary nebulae,” Mondez said. “But then we’re not clear what individual stars like our sun would do in this context.” Another mystery for Webb to unravel. This side-by-side comparison shows observations of the Southern Ring Nebula in near-infrared light, left, and mid-infrared light, right, from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI Ripples shed from the dying star in the Southern Ring Nebula carry metals into space like spores. These last breaths will forge molecules and sprout new objects in the world. Stars are element factories, astrophysicists say: They produce carbon, for example, the same chemical that humans and much of life on Earth rely on. Are we sad that the star is dying? Pontopidan gave an indirect answer. His answer was based on science, but sounded almost spiritual. “This is the end for the star,” he said. “But it is the beginning for other stars and for other planetary systems.”
