{"id":54873,"date":"2025-08-02T11:46:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-02T11:46:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/54873\/"},"modified":"2025-08-02T11:46:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-02T11:46:11","slug":"webbs-incredible-new-nebula-photos-preview-the-suns-deadly-fate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/54873\/","title":{"rendered":"Webb’s Incredible New Nebula Photos Preview the Sun’s Deadly Fate"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Side-by-side<\/p>\n

The James Webb Space Telescope\u2019s<\/a> (JWST) newest images<\/a> offer a dazzling preview of the Sun\u2019s eventual fate. <\/p>\n

NASA\u2019s JWST peered at the planetary nebula NGC 6072 using its near- and mid-infrared cameras, revealing incredible details that would otherwise be hidden. The new portrait of NGC 6072 looks three-dimensional, like it\u2019s jumping off the screen. <\/p>\n

Webb used both its NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to capture NGC 6072, and both cameras capture details that are impossible to see in visible light. In NIRCam\u2019s case, it sees NGC 6072\u2019s complex outflows of cooling molecular gas, including molecular hydrogen. While NIRCam can peer through cosmic dust, MIRI\u2019s detectors, tuned for longer wavelengths, see much of this dust as an eerie blue. <\/p>\n

\"A\u2018NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope\u2019s view of planetary nebula NGC 6072 in the near-infrared shows a complex scene of multiple outflows expanding out at different angles from a dying star at the center of the scene. In this image, the red areas represent cool molecular gas, for example, molecular hydrogen.\u2019 | Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI <\/p>\n

NIRCam also shows that the planetary nebula is multi-polar, meaning that there are likely two stars involved. <\/p>\n

\u201cSpecifically, a companion star is interacting with an aging star that had already begun to shed some of its outer layers of gas and dust,\u201d NASA writes. <\/p>\n

NGC 6072 is a planetary nebula in the southern constellation Scorpius. It is located just over 3,000 light-years away from Earth, making it a relatively very near neighbor. <\/p>\n

\"Colorful\u2018The mid-infrared view of planetary nebula NGC 6072 from NASA\u2019s James Webb Space Telescope show expanding circular shells around the outflows from the dying central star. In this image, the blue represents cool molecular gas seen in red in the image from Webb\u2019s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) due to color mapping.\u2019 | Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI <\/p>\n

Planetary nebulae<\/a> like NGC 6072 were discovered back in the 1700s, and NGC 6072 specifically was discovered by British astronomer John Herschel in 1837. The term \u201cplanetary nebula\u201d is misleading, as these often-beautiful cosmic objects, favorite targets of many amateur astronomers and astrophotographers, have nothing to do with planets whatsoever. <\/p>\n

Instead, a planetary nebula forms when an intermediate mass star (about one to eight solar masses) reaches the end of its life. Unlike more massive stars that die in a remarkable explosion \u2014 a supernova \u2014 intermediate-mass stars don\u2019t have enough material to support such a bombastic death. <\/p>\n

Instead, once intermediate-mass stars run out of the fuel required for nuclear fusion, their outer shell begins growing while the inner core shrinks. As the core shrinks, its gravitational forces decrease, and the star\u2019s outer layer breaks free, growing more and more, sometimes enveloping the planets that orbit it. <\/p>\n

This is a vital process for the Universe\u2019s continued evolution, as not only are the star\u2019s initial chemicals released into the cosmos, so too are new atoms that the star formed during its life. Once the core can no longer keep everything together, chemicals and elements float into space, including metals, forever changing the composition of the dead star\u2019s host galaxy and providing the ingredients required for new stars and planets to form. <\/p>\n

Scientists expect that this is the precise fate that awaits the Sun. It is anticipated that the Sun will go through this process in about five billion years. <\/p>\n

Image credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The James Webb Space Telescope\u2019s (JWST) newest images offer a dazzling preview of the Sun\u2019s eventual fate. NASA\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":54874,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[2608,41630,12270,718,12596,41631,79,193,1608,12269],"class_list":["post-54873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-astrophotography","tag-jameswebbspacetelescope","tag-jwst","tag-nasa","tag-nebula","tag-planetarynebula","tag-science","tag-space","tag-sun","tag-webb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=54873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/54873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/54874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=54873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=54873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=54873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}