⁣Cosmic tree rings! 😮 ⠀ Just as growth rings record the history of a tree, these rings contain more than a century’s worth of stellar history. Every eight years, the two stars in this image are brought together by their orbits — creating colliding streams of gas that, with the right conditions, form a new ring of dust. The James Webb Space Telescope reveals 15 of the 17 rings seen here for the first time! ⠀ This star pair, known together as Wolf-Rayet 140 (WR 140), contains one Wolf-Rayet star. Wolf-Rayet stars are rare — only 600 have been found. They’re incredibly short-lived, generating powerful winds that push huge amounts of gas into space. Scientists believe that the Wolf-Rayet star in this pair may have already shed half its original mass in this process! ⠀ Some other Wolf-Rayet systems also form dust, but only WR 140 is known to make rings. The ring pattern comes from WR 140’s Wolf-Rayet star, which has a unique elongated orbit.⠀ ⠀ Webb observed WR 140 with its mid-infrared instrument (MIRI), which is designed to see cooler objects such as these spectacular dust rings. MIRI also shows the best evidence yet that Wolf-Rayet stars can produce carbon-rich dust molecules, and that such molecules can survive even in the hostile environment surrounding these stars.⠀ ⠀ Bringing it closer to home, this helps us understand how Wolf-Rayet stars potentially supply materials for star and planet formation — and may even have played a role in creating our own solar system. More at the link in @NASAWebb's bio. ⠀ Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, JPL-Caltech⠀ ⠀ Image description: A bright dot at the center of star-filled black space. The bright dot is actually 2 stars meeting, as their orbits bring them together every 8 years. The stellar pair are surrounded by 17 orange-pink rings of gas and dust that resemble tree trunk rings. The rings have a slight rectangular shape and are very clear and defined starting at about 1 o’clock on a clockface. They start to break up a bit as we travel clockwise. At the 8 o’clock position, only parts of about six rings can be seen as they disappear from view.⠀ ⠀ #JWST #Webb #JamesWebbSpaceTelescope #NASA #Tree #Rings #Star #Stars