James Webb captured the unique details of the remains of the star Cassiopeia A.

Scientists have discovered unique details of the remnants of a star Cassiopeia A. thanks to new images taken James Webb.

This star is the youngest known remnant of a massive exploding star in our galaxy, providing a unique opportunity to learn more about how such events occur. supernovae.

science like never seen before

These fossils are believed to be critical for the colonization of new generations of stars and planets with biologically important elements such as calcium and iron.

However, the time and date of the star’s explosion, which created this collection of gas, dust and debris, has not been fully confirmed. The best estimate is that the light from the supernova that created Cas A reached Earth in August 1680, about 340 years ago.

These images contain an overwhelming amount of information about the little-known evolutionary phases that the star went through before the explosion, indicates Forbes Purdue University astronomer Danny Milisavlevich, principal investigator of the Webb program that made the observations.

Cassiopeia A. is the prototype of a supernova remnant that has been extensively studied by several ground and space observatories, including the Chandra X-ray Observatory on the Moon. POT. Observations at multiple wavelengths can be combined to give scientists a better understanding of the remnant.

Bright colors of the new image Cassiopeia A, in which infrared light is converted to wavelengths of visible light, contains a wealth of scientific information that the team is beginning to unravel.

Outside of the bubble, especially at the top and left, there are curtains of material that appear orange and red due to hot dust being ejected. This marks the location where the ejected material from the exploding star collides with the surrounding circumstellar gas and dust.

Within this outer layer are bright pink speckled strands dotted with clusters and knots. This is the material of the star itself, which glows due to a mixture of various heavy elements such as oxygen, argon and neon, as well as dust radiation.

Origin of cosmic dust

Observations have shown that even very young galaxies in the early universe are flooded with huge amounts of dust. It is difficult to explain the origin of this dust without resorting to supernovaewhich spewing large amounts of heavy elements (the building blocks of dust) through space.

However, existing observations of supernovae have not been able to definitively explain the amount of dust we see in these early galaxies. When studying Cas A with James Webb astronomers hope to get a better idea of ​​its dust content, which could help us understand where the building blocks of the planets and ourselves are made.

The remnant spans about 10 light years and lies 11,000 light years away in the constellation of Cassiopeia.

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