JWST Discovers Hollow Shell of Buckytballs in Tc 1 Nebula

The James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument images the planetary nebula Tc 1, revealing buckyballs arranged in a thin hollow shell around the central star and enabling exact chemical mapping through integral field unit spectroscopy. This builds on the 2010 Spitzer discovery led by Jan Cami, offering new clues about how these carbon-based molecules form and persist in space, and highlighting a surprising, spiral-like structure and a mysterious inverted question-mark feature in Tc 1.