{"id":147147,"date":"2025-11-22T13:47:22","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T13:47:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/147147\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T13:47:22","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T13:47:22","slug":"this-dying-star-is-forming-a-strange-spider-structure-and-webb-is-giving-scientists-a-brand-new-view","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/147147\/","title":{"rendered":"This dying star is forming a strange spider structure, and Webb is giving scientists a brand new view"},"content":{"rendered":"

This incredible picture of cosmic chaos shows a dying star ejecting shells of material outwards into space.<\/p>\n

The extended lobes and twisted knots of gas and dust have earned the object, NGC 6537, the nickname Red Spider Nebula.<\/p>\n

\"JamesCredit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI<\/p>\n

And the James Webb Space telescope is revealing the secrets of the Red Spider like never before.<\/p>\n

The dying throes of a star like our own<\/p>\n

The Red Spider Nebula is a type of cosmic cloud known as a planetary nebula<\/a>.<\/p>\n

These amazing objects give us a future glimpse of how our our Sun might end its life, as planetary nebulae are the final stages of a Sun-like star.<\/p>\n

Having exhausted much of its fuel, the star balloons into a cool red giant, then casts its outer layers into space.<\/p>\n

This exposes the star’s white hot core, and ultraviolet light from the dense stellar remnant lights up the cast-off material, causing it to glow.<\/p>\n

Many planetary nebulae appear like rounded, puffed-out objects, which is why they are known as ‘planetary’, even though they don’t have anything to do with planets.<\/p>\n

The Red Spider Nebula, however, looks anything but spherical. Its long, spindly structure and central ‘body’ is what’s earned it the ‘spider’ nickname.<\/p>\n

\"JamesJames Webb Space Telescope image of NGC 6537, the Red Spider Nebula. Credit: ESA\/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. H. Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology)
\nExploring the Red Spider<\/p>\n

The James Webb Space Telescope used its Near-InfraRed Camera\u00a0(NIRCam) instrument to give astronomers a new view of the Red Spider Nebula.<\/p>\n

Because Webb views the cosmos in infrared<\/a>, it can reveal objects that aren’t normally visible with the human eye.<\/p>\n

In the case of the Red Spider Nebula, the James Webb Space Telescope has given astronomers a view of never-before-seen details in the cloud, against a backdrop of thousands of stars.<\/p>\n

\"JamesJames Webb Space Telescope image of NGC 6537, the Red Spider Nebula. Credit: ESA\/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. H. Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology)<\/p>\n

We can clearly see the central star of the Red Spider Nebula glowing in infrared, much brighter than the dusty gas that surrounds it.<\/p>\n

In optical images, for example those captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, the star appears faint and blue.<\/p>\n

Webb has also revealed a shroud of hot dust around the central star.<\/p>\n

\"HubbleHubble Space Telescope image of the Red Spider Nebula. Credit: ESA & Garrelt Mellema (Leiden University, the Netherlands)
\nA companion for the spider star?<\/p>\n

Although we can only see a single star at the heart of the Red Spider Nebula, astronomers say it may have a hidden companion.<\/p>\n

They say that might explain why the nebula has such a unique shape, as a second star would explain its narrow waist and wide outflows.<\/p>\n

A similar hourglass shape is seen in other planetary nebulae like the Butterfly Nebula, which\u00a0Webb also observed<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Webb reveals the full extent of the Red Spider Nebula’s outstretched lobes, forming the \u2018legs\u2019 of the spider.<\/p>\n

\"ImageImage of the Butterfly Nebula using data from the James Webb Space Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter\/submillimeter Array. Credit: ESA\/Webb, NASA & CSA, M. Matsuura, ALMA (ESO\/NAOJ\/NRAO), N. Hirano, M. Zamani (ESA\/Webb)<\/p>\n

The lobes, seen in blue, are traced by light emitted from H2\u00a0molecules.<\/p>\n

These lobes are bubble-like structures, each stretching about three lightyears across.<\/p>\n

Gas flowing from the centre of the nebula has inflated the bubbles over thousands of years.<\/p>\n

Webb’s view of the Red Spider Nebula shows more gas jetting out from the nebula\u2019s centre.<\/p>\n

The purple \u2018S\u2019 shape at the heart of the nebula follows light from ionised iron atoms.<\/p>\n

This marks where a jet is shooting outwards from near the central star and smashing into cast-off material, creating the twisted, rippling structure seen here.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This incredible picture of cosmic chaos shows a dying star ejecting shells of material outwards into space. The…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":147148,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-147147","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-space","8":"tag-il","9":"tag-israel","10":"tag-science","11":"tag-space"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147147","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=147147"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/147147\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/147148"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=147147"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=147147"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=147147"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}