Impending Stellar “Death” Revealed – NASA's Webb Telescope Captures Prelude to Supernova - SciTechDaily

A distinctive halo of gas and dust frames the star and glows in the infrared light detected by Webb, displaying knotty structure and a history of episodic ejections.

Cosmic dust is forming in the turbulent nebulas surrounding these types of stars, which is composed of the heavy-element building blocks of the modern universe, including life on Earth.

Wolf-Rayet stars are known to be efficient dust producers, and the Mid-Infrared Instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows this to great effect.

Explore some of the possibilities and consequences with this infographic, and discover important roles that dust can play—from sheltering forming stars to providing a platform for the development of organic molecules that make up life as we know it.

Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped relative to direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).The scale bar is labeled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year.

Webb’s detailed image of WR 124 preserves forever a brief, turbulent time of transformation, and promises future discoveries that will reveal the long-shrouded mysteries of cosmic dust.