The James Webb Telescope’s “cosmic Christmas ball” has earned a spot on the White House advent calendar

A newly revealed image of Cassiopeia A (Cas A), captured by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), It shows the glowing remnants of a supernova still glowing like a cosmic Christmas ballabout 340 years after a star violently exploded to form.

It was an image of the supernova remnant, which is located about 10,000 light-years from Earth Introduced in celebration of the 2023 White House Holidays and the first White House Advent Calendar By the First Lady and NASA.

This supernova remnant has already been studied in great detail at different wavelengths, but a new image taken by the James Webb Space Telescope Marking an ‘early Christmas’ for astronomers, Cas A – about 10 light-years in diameter – appears in high resolution. As is usual with the James Webb Space Telescope, the image was created using data from infrared wavelengths.

“Thanks to the resolution of NIRCam, we can now see how the dying star shattered as it exploded, leaving behind filaments similar to tiny glass shards.” Danny Milisavljevic, a scientist at Purdue University.

The image, taken by JWST’s NIRCam, follows another image taken of Cas A, one that belongs to another of the telescope’s instruments, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (Merry). But the strangest thing is that Many of these features are not visible in the new JWST image, creating a Christmas mystery for astronomers..

In theory, these features could be absent in this new image — which also appears less colorful than the previous Cas A image — because different colors are assigned to different wavelengths of infrared light in the two images. This means that Each color indicates a different physical process occurring in the shell of stellar matter.

The most visible colors in the NIRCam image are bright orange and light pink, which represent the inner shell of Cas A. In this region there are thin cores of Sulfur, oxygen, argon and neon gas from a star that exploded more than 10,300 years ago.

Inside this rubble There are also filaments of dust and gas about 10 billion light-years in diameterbut it is still too small to be resolved even by this super-powerful $10 billion telescope.

Colors of Cassiopeia A

the The photo shows the perimeter of the Cas A main shellBut they are represented by dark orange and red colors and appear almost like smoke around the devastation left behind by this starburst. Here, the supernova explosion continues to push outward, colliding with the “peristellar material” surrounding it, which is itself too cold to be detected by the James Webb Space Telescope.

The white colors in the image represent electrons being accelerated by strong magnetic fields to speeds close to the speed of light They emit a form of radiation called synchrotron radiation. This type of radiation also forms the bubble-like structures we see in the lower half of the inner cavity.

A surprising feature of Cas A is that By its absence in the NIRCam image is the “Green Monster,” a Grinch-like ring of green light that scientists hope to see at the core of the wreck’s inner crust.. However, the alleged monster seen in April through MIRI’s observations of supernova remnants has led researchers to describe its presence as difficult to explain. However, as antisocial as Seuss’s creations are, the remains of the green monster still visible in this photo may help explain the situation.

The circular holes that appeared in the MIRI image can be seen in the NIRCam image above, as shown The white and purple emissions represent ionized gas that forms when stellar debris makes its way through the outer gas They end up giving it shape.

A cool new feature that NIRCam noticed is The gas and dust bubble that researchers named “Baby Cas A”. This name is appropriate, as the material bubble appears to be the product of the main supernova remnant, or rather the light from the explosion that reflects off hot dust that glows as it cools. Baby Cas A is located about 170 light-years away from Cas A, and is likely to be an object of great interest to astronomers due to its complex dust patterns.

The NIRCam image also shows that Cas A is surrounded by other luminous echoes “descending” from the main starburst. Maybe soon we will investigate Other decorations on JWST’s inexplicably large cosmic Christmas tree.

News reference: Milisavljevic D., Luz I., Tamim T. Webb stuns NASA with a new, high-definition look at the exploding star. Webb Space Telescope (2023).