NEW JWST IMAGE shows SEVENTEEN carbon dust shells around a binary star system
@science@lemmy.world @science@beehaw.org @space@lemmy.world @space@newsmast.community #space #science #nasa #astronomy
Looks like someone got their hands on a Genesis device…
What's a carbon dust shell and why's that cool?
Carbon is pretty important for earth, and it's unclear how we have so much of it. Dual star systems shooting out carbon at 1% the speed of light kind of explains it pretty well: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/webb-watches-carbon-rich-dust-shells-form-expand-in-star-system/
@cyberpunk007@lemmy.ca A carbon dust shell is a layer of carbon-rich material expelled from a star in it's later stages of life in which a star ejects these shells due to stellar instability since they are the lighter, outer elements of a star.
It's cool because JWST could even resolve detail like that!! We can also learn more about the carbon chemistry of the system, binary dynamics, and the history of the system :D
Sounds like some epic rhythmic banger
As they swing past one another (within the central white dot in the Webb images), the stellar winds from each star slam together, the material compresses, and carbon-rich dust forms. Webb’s latest observations show 17 dust shells shining in mid-infrared light that are expanding at regular intervals into the surrounding space.
[...]
Like clockwork, the stars’ winds generate dust for several months every eight years, as the pair make their closest approach during a wide, elongated orbit.
Baaically you're looking at dust showing a pattern of stellar turbulence. There's a nice video clip in the article that shows how the two stars orbit each other. Because the orbit is consistent, it is producing these compression waves every 8 years when the stars are closest to each other.
Also interesting:
The dust’s distribution isn’t uniform. Though this isn’t obvious at first glance, zooming in on the shells in Webb’s images reveals that some of the dust has “piled up,” forming amorphous, delicate clouds that are as large as our entire solar system.
I have so many questions. Like, was there supposed to be a link to an article? This picture alone doesn’t really answer any questions.
It's a Mastodon toot, they only have like 180 characters or something
Yeah, it'd be a shame if they had to sacrifice some of those mentions and hashtags to relay meaningful information.
If you wanna be twitter you behave like twitter.
Oh, that makes sense.
Many instances allow much longer messages, but it depends on the admin and how they see it. Could even be thousands of characters in some cases.
Anyway, mastodon integration is nice, but there are some serious issues too.
Cool cool cool. I imagine this potentially means we're seeing the development of a 17 object solar system? Maybe with some of those being asteroid belts?
A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.
rule #1: be kind
<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.
2024-11-11