James Webb captures unprecedented detail about the remains of a star that exploded 340 years ago

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows in stunning detail the debris of a cataclysmic supernova explosion.

The supernova remnant, known as Cassiopeia A or Cas A, formed about 340 years ago from our perspective here on Earth. That makes Cassiopeia, about 10 light-years across, one of the smallest clouds of supernova debris known to us.

With images like these, scientists can perform "cosmic forensics" to better understand what happens when stars die.

The material ejected by supernovae like this continues to circulate throughout the galaxies and become the building blocks for the next generation of stars and planets.

About 4.6 billion years ago, this process helped form the sun and planets of our solar system and paved the way for living organisms, providing us with elements such as calcium in our bones and iron in our blood.

Cassiopeia could provide a window into the very early stages of this process. For this reason, the object, located 11,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Cassiopeia, has been extensively studied by astronomers using ground-based telescopes. and satellite.

"Cassiopeia A represents our best opportunity to look into the debris field of an exploding star and perform a kind of stellar autopsy to understand what kind of star was present," Danny Milislavljevic of Purdue University in Indiana, principal investigator for the James Webb program who captured the new observations, said in a NASA statement. How did this star explode?

Compared to the previous infrared images, he noted, "we see amazing detail that we couldn't access before. Translating the infrared light from the A-chairs - wavelengths detected by the James Webb telescope - into the vibrant colors that appear in the new image is not A purely aesthetic choice, it reveals a wealth of scientific information that researchers are just beginning to access."

At the top of the newly released James Webb image, and at the outer edge of a bubble of material spewed from the supernova, was a veil of orange-red emission of warm dust, NASA officials said. This is where material ejected by the exploding star gets pushed into the surrounding gas and dust, causing it to heat up and glow.

Within the bubble, down to its center, are the lumpy, bright pink filaments, which represent material from the exploding star.

These filaments produce emissions of heavy elements such as oxygen, neon and argon, which the doomed star formed through nuclear fusion before it was destroyed.

In millions of years, these Cassiopeia A elements may spread out and help form a new star cluster.

While the process by which supernovae release elements to future stars and planets is well understood by scientists, what is not clear is how the early galaxies became filled with so much cosmic dust.

Mission team members said the investigation of Cassiopeia A with James Webb could help solve this mystery, as well as provide us with stunning images of deep space.