In 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope captured light waves from the star WR124 near the end of its life. According to the Smithsonian magazine, the WR124 has 30 times the mass of our sun and is located 15,000 light-years away from our planet, in the constellation Sagitta. The image shows a rare event when the star goes through the Wolf-Rayet phase, right before it explodes as a supernova.
The hot, intense, and luminous stage, Wolf-Rayet, only happens to massive stars. The mass of a star determines its life cycle - the larger it is, the shorter its life will be. For this reason, the Sun and other smaller stars will eventually cool down and stop shining, while enormous stars undergo a much more powerful and violent end.
Nasa’s educator's website says that stars are born from giant clouds of gas and dust called nebulas, where all their matter is located. In this case, the WR124 has a 10,000-year-old nebula in which Webb’s NIRCam captured its luminous white core surrounded by wispy pink and purple dust clouds, seen in the first image. The second image, from 1998, shows the same star, but in a mix of red, orange, and yellow glowing mass.
This is one of the wonders of the universe that technology allows us to see instead of only imagining it. The NASA astrophysicist Amber Straughn said: “This is Carl Sagan’s stardust concept, the fact that the iron in your blood and the calcium in your bones was literally forged inside of a star that exploded billions of years ago. And that’s what we’re seeing in this new image. That dust is spreading out into the cosmos and will eventually create planets. And this is how we got here, in fact.”
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