Wolf-Rayet 124: A Star in Transition Wolf-Rayet stars are a rare prelude to the famous final act of massive stars: the supernova. In one of its first observations, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured the Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 in unprecedented detail. A distinctive halo of gas and dust frame
The luminous, hot star Wolf-Rayet 124 is prominent at the center of the James Webb Space Telescope’s composite image combining near-infrared and mid-infrared wavelengths of light from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production TeamWolf-Rayet stars are a rare prelude to the famous final act of massive stars: the supernova. In one of its first observations,captured the Wolf-Rayet star WR 124 in unprecedented detail.
Massive stars race through their lifecycles, and only some of them go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before going, making Webb’s detailed observations of this rare phase valuable to astronomers. Wolf-Rayet stars are in the process of casting off their outer layers, resulting in their characteristic halos of gas and dust. The star WR 124 is 30 times the mass of the Sun and has shed 10 Suns’ worth of material—so far.
This composite image of star WR 124 captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera and Mid-Infrared Instrument includes arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference. The scale bar is labeled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year. One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers.
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