New JWST images reveal the knots of the Helix Nebula with stunning clarity
A fresh look at the Helix Nebula captures new details of the cycles of stellar life and death
A new image of a portion of the Helix Nebula from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) highlights comet-like knots, fierce stellar winds, and ejected shells of gas with an atmosphere surrounding a dying star.
NASA/ESA/CSA/STSCI (image); Alyssa Pagan/STScI (image processing)
Even for astronomers who have observed the same cosmic objects throughout their careers, new images of these celestial objects from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have the power to delight and surprise. See for example, Latest images of JWST’s iconic Helix NebulaAlso known as the “Eye of God”, a stellar graveyard is in the constellation Aquarius, about 650 light years from Earth.
The Australian astronomer wrote, “I thought it was a close-up of lavender until I saw the galaxies.” Jesse Christiansen in a social media postReferring to the nebula’s floral outlines and JWST’s ability to capture distant galaxies in practically every observation. (Click the link to his post above to see the galaxy-scattered close-ups he mentioned.)
The Helix Nebula is an example of what astronomers call a planetary nebula, alluding to their spherical shape, as seen in early telescopes. But the appearance of planetary nebulae has nothing to do with planets – these nebulae are actually swirling clouds of hot gas that emerge from dying Sun-like stars and persist after their death. These echoes still have a “planetary” connection because their blown clouds of gas and dust serve as raw material for new generations of stars and planets.
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A video compares images of the Helix Nebula from three NASA observatories: a visible-light image from the Hubble Space Telescope, an infrared view from the Spitzer Space Telescope, and a high-resolution near-infrared view from the JWST.
As revealed in new JWST images, the Helix Nebula’s distinctive “Eye of God” structure is linked to a hot interior of recently ionized gas surrounded by a cooler, older shell of dust that was ejected by a dying star. Where the two meet, bundles of hot matter pierce the dusty shell, creating lumpy plumes that look vaguely like comets. Iconic photographs taken over the past decade by leading observatories, such as the Hubble Space Telescope and the Spitzer Space Telescope, showed this vortex as an extended haze around the nebula’s glowing iris.
Now the fog has cleared. Thanks to the unprecedented resolution of JWST’s near-infrared camera, new images present this collision cloud as a richly textured tapestry of cosmic destruction and creation. The diffusive motions of dust give rise to waves of gas, creating countless fractal structures into which, one day, new worlds may coalesce.
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