Webb’s photo was released during the South by Southwest event held by the US Aerospace Agency (NASA) at the Austin Expo Center in Texas.
Webb’s detection of the star was “among the first and rare images he captured after it became operational in late 2021”.
Webb’s infrared cameras captured a cloud of gas and dust spewed into space before the massive hot star died, 15,000 light-years away.
It was stated that the cloud of gas and dust, glowing purple like a “blooming cherry blossom”, consisted of substances in the upper layers of the star and dispersed into space before its death.
Scientists explained that this phase is only seen in some stars and that it is the last phase before the star dies with the explosion called “supernova”.
“We’ve never seen this phase like this before, it’s very exciting,” said Macarena Garcia Marin, a European Space Agency scientist involved in the project. said.
30 times larger than the sun
NASA announced that the star, also known as “WR 124” in the Sagittarius constellation, is 30 times larger than the Sun and has so far ejected 10 times the mass of the Sun into space.
It was stated that the Hubble Space Telescope had also photographed this phase of the star before, but the image did not include the details captured by Webb, and the cloud of gas and dust looked like a “blurry ball of fire”.
