Embryonic Star Baby

[Recusant]

. . . As in 2001: A Space Odyssey. At least that's what I see in the image. Big eye spot and a tail, essentially an unhatched tadpole sort of thing. I haven't gone in search of reactions but I'd be surprised if I were the only one to have got that idea.

"A Natural Laboratory Of Spiralling Dust Shells" | Universe Today

Dust shells like coiled serpents wrap themselves aroud Apep, a triple star system dominated by a pair of Wolf-Rayet stars. The JWST revealed their presence for the first time. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Science: Yinuo Han (Caltech), Ryan White (Macquarie University); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

In multiple ways, the JWST is opening our eyes to the Universe. It's enriching our understanding of the cosmos by showing us things we didn't think were possible, and by uncovering more details in things that have been observed many times by lesser telescopes.

One of these subjects is called Apep, a triple star system about 15,000 light years away. Apep is home to a binary pair of Wolf-Rayet stars and a third supergiant star. The WR stars orbit each other about once every two centuries, while the much smaller companion is about 1,700 au away and takes more than 10,000 years to complete a single orbit.

The JWST's MIRI instrument captured new images of Apep that show four serpent-like dust swirls around the system. In the image, the fourth one is nearly transparent and is at the edge of the frame. Previous images showed only a single shell.

[Continues . . .]

The paper is open access:

"The Formation and Evolution of Dust in the Colliding-wind Binary Apep Revealed by JWST" | The Astrophysical Journal

Abstract:

Carbon-rich Wolf–Rayet (W-R) stars are significant contributors of carbonaceous dust to the galactic environment; however, the mechanisms and conditions for formation and subsequent evolution of dust around these stars remain open questions.

Here we present JWST observations of the W-R+W-R colliding-wind binary Apep, which reveal an intricate series of nested concentric dust shells that are abundant in detailed substructure. The striking regularity in these substructures between successive shells suggests an exactly repeating formation mechanism combined with a highly stable outflow that maintains a consistent morphology even after reaching 0.6 pc (assuming a distance of 2.4 kpc) into the interstellar medium.

The concentric dust shells show subtle deviations from spherical outflow, which could reflect orbital modulation along the eccentric binary orbit or nonsphericity in the stellar wind. Tracking the evolution of dust across the multitiered structure, we measure the dust temperature evolution that can broadly be described assuming an amorphous carbon composition in radiative thermal equilibrium with the central stars. The temperature profile and orbital period place new distance constraints that support Apep being at a greater distance than previously estimated, reducing the line-of-sight and sky-plane wind speed discrepancy previously thought to characterize the system.