It resembles a cherry blossom but is a photo of a Wolf-Rayet star , which is found in the constellation Sagittarius, 15,000 light-years away from our planet.
And so, while the Earth prepares to welcome the new season, it's already spring in space. The image - captured by the lenses of the James Webb telescope - shows the celestial body WR 124 in detail. "Fortunately , we can study its "petals" (of dust) in detail ," NASA wrote on Twitter.
The star in question would be " among the brightest, most massive and most briefly detectable known " and would be in a very delicate phase of its "life": it would in fact be about to die . «Massive stars – such as WR 124 – go through their life cycles and only some of them go through a brief 'Wolf-Rayet' phase before going supernova , making Webb's detailed observations of this rare phase invaluable to astronomers» , explains the US National Agency for Space and Aeronautical Activities in a statement.
«Wolf-Rayet stars – continues NASA – are preparing to shed their outer layers, giving rise to the characteristic halos of gas and dust. The star WR 124 is 30 times the mass of the Sun and has so far lost 10 Suns worth of material . As the ejected gas moves away from the star and cools, cosmic dust forms and glows in the infrared light detectable by Webb."
(Unioneonline/vf)