Webb Telescope Reveals Stunning Details of Supernova Remnant Cassiopeia A

New mid-infrared images of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), the Milky Way Galaxy's youngest known core collapse supernova remnant, taken by NASA's Webb Space Telescope, may help astronomers understand the colorful agglomeration of dust and debris. The images reveal the poorly understood evolutionary phases the star went through prior to the explosion. The central region of the remnant remains the most intriguing, with a long wisp of filaments running North/South and East/West that are pockmarked with bubbles of beautiful, confounding symmetry. The data set is made up of hundreds of individual images that must be carefully combined and stitched together, and years of analysis is planned to constrain how dust and molecules were formed and destroyed by the supernova.