All articles tagged with #cometary knots
A new JWST infrared image of the nearby Helix Nebula (NGC 7293, ~650 light-years away) shows intricate cometary knots—earth-mass clumps several Pluto-orbits across—whose origins are not fully understood; one leading idea is that stellar wind from the central star shapes and drives the knots, shedding light on the life cycle of Sun-like stars.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope delivers a sharper infrared view of the Helix Nebula, the nearby planetary nebula nicknamed the Eye of Sauron, revealing about 40,000 cometary knots as the dying star sheds its outer layers. The image, updating Hubble's famed portrait, shows how the gas glows under the nebula’s radiation and how the knots persist against the expanding wind. The Helix lies ~650 light-years away and will fade over the next 10,000–20,000 years as the gas disperses, offering a glimpse of the Sun's eventual fate as a red giant that becomes a white dwarf.
NASA's JWST has released a high-resolution image of the Helix Nebula, revealing its comet-like knots formed as a dying star sheds its outer layers. The new NIRCam view shows hotter blue gas near the core and cooler dust at the edges, offering our closest, sharpest look at this ~655-light-year-away planetary nebula and illustrating how stellar death seeds new star formation.