Webb Embraces Spooky Season With Red Spider Nebula Portrait
The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope got into the spooky season spirit this week by capturing a “cosmic creepy-crawly called NGC 6537,” more commonly referred to as the Red Spider Nebula.
Using Webb’s Near InfraRed Camera (NIRCam), scientists uncovered never-before-seen details in the hauntingly beautiful planetary nebula, which appears against a dense backdrop of stars and distant galaxies.
A planetary nebula like the Red Spider Nebula actually has nothing to do with planets at all. Originally named “planetary nebula” because they resembled planets to early astronomers, planetary nebulae like this form when fairly typical stars, not unlike the Sun, reach the end of their lives. As stars age and begin to die, they expand and then shed their outermost layers, eventually exposing their cores. This core continues to emit intense ultraviolet light, which “ionizes the cast-off material,” causing it to glow.
“The planetary nebula phase of a star’s life is as fleeting as it is beautiful, lasting only a few tens of thousands of years,” says the European Space Agency (ESA). Tens of thousands of years may sound like a lot, but it’s merely a blink on the cosmic timescale.
In Webb’s stunning new portrait, the Red Spider Nebula’s central star is easily visible, glowing slightly brighter than the “webs of dusty gas” that surround it. What is not easily seen is a potential hidden companion star, which scientists hypothesize may also be in the central region. A “stellar companion” could help explain the nebula’s shape, including its “narrow waist and wide outflows.”
Thanks to Webb’s infrared and near-infrared sensitivity, scientists have been able to discover exciting new details, including, for the first time, the full extent of the nebula’s “outstretched lobes,” which form the spider’s legs. These lobes appear in the image as blue and trace the light emitted by H2 molecules, which are two hydrogen atoms bonded together. These blue lobes extend out about three light-years.
“Gas is also actively jetting out from the nebula’s center, as these new Webb observations show. An elongated purple ‘S’ shape centered on the heart of the nebula follows the light from ionized iron atoms,” ESA explains. “This feature marks where a fast-moving jet has emerged from near the nebula’s central star and collided with material that was previously cast away by the star, sculpting the rippling structure of the nebula seen today.”
Image credits: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. H. Kastner (Rochester Institute of Technology). Content used under CC BY 4.0 INT license.
