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NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a high-resolution image of the Helix Nebula, located 650 light-years away. The image reveals comet-like knots and intricate layers of gas shed by a dying star, offering a close-up view of a potential future for our own Sun and planetary system.
Webb’s near-infrared view highlights the interaction between fierce stellar winds and colder shells of gas. The image displays a spectrum of colors representing temperature and chemistry, from hot ionized gas (blue) to cooler molecular hydrogen (yellow and red). These observations show how dying stars recycle material back into the cosmos, seeding the raw ingredients for new worlds, and sharpen details that were only hinted at by previous telescopes like Hubble and Spitzer.
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