By Aazam
October 16, 2022
The James Webb Space Telescope has acquired a picture of a star spewing out several dust plumes in a powerful beam of light
The bright smeared tails of comets as they approach the sun are produced by radiation pressure, which is one of the mechanisms preventing stars from collapsing under the weight of their own gravity
The odd image, which was first made public in July by citizen scientist Judy Schmidt, depicts a pair of stars in the Cygnus constellation's WR140, which is 5,600 light-years away
There are almost 20 concentric ripples that form an onion-like shell around the binary star system
The ripples are plumes of incandescent dust and soot ejected by two leaking stars in WR140 as they orbit each other every eight years
As they approach, their 1,864 mph solar winds collide, arcing a jet of material that forms rings
The orbital period determines the distance between the rings and when the plumes are expelled
The researchers claim the James Webb Space Telescope will allow them to explore deeper into WR140 and other strange systems where new physics may lurk
Astronomers first resorted to one of the largest optical telescopes in the world, the Keck Observatory in Hawaii, and its 32 foot mirror, to observe the blazing rings of infrared soot