STUNNING IMAGES OF RING NEBULA CAPTURED BY JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

Space is a breathtaking place, and with technology evolving, humans have been able to witness the spectacular view. The James Webb Space Telescope has recently taken a new stunning image of the Ring Nebula making it possible for us to view the beauty of space since it was launched in December 2021. The telescope has captured several remarkable sights which included never-before-seen celestial landmarks such as the Pillars of Creation, the Tarantula Nebula, and even the birth of a supernova. As with these incredible sights, the ring nebula in the newly released image is colourful and detailed and could alert astronomers to the death of the star. In fact, this telescope provided his two versions of the new image. One was taken with  NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and the other with  MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument). Photographs reveal the coiled filamentary structure of the inner ring, giving it a cloud-like appearance. Her 20,000 dense globules within the ring contain hydrogen molecules. The ring itself he consists of 10 or more arcs. There are also thin rings of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Hot gas exists in the ring. The nebula itself is actually a dying star on its way from a red giant to a white dwarf.

"Planetary nebulae were once thought to be simple round objects with a single dying star at their centre," said Roger Wesson of Cardiff University in a NASA statement, looking through a small telescope. It is said that it was named because it looks like a blurry planet. Just a few thousand years ago, the star was a red giant that had lost most of its mass. As a final goodbye, the hot core ionises or heats this ejected gas, and the nebula responds with multicoloured light emissions. However, modern observations show that most planetary nebulae are breathtakingly complex. The question then arises: How do spherical stars create such complex and delicate nonspherical structures? " 

Only 2,000 light-years from Earth, the Ring Nebula lies at the centre of the constellation Lyra and has been known since 1779. It can be easily spotted with binoculars or an amateur telescope. “When I first saw the images, I was blown away by the level of detail,” explains Wesson. The nebula's eponymous bright ring is made up of about 20,000  clumps of dense molecular hydrogen gas, each about the same mass as  Earth. Within the ring are narrow emission bands of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), complex carbonaceous molecules not expected to form in the ring nebula. Outside the bright ring, you can see strange "spikes" pointing directly from the central star. It is clearly visible in the infrared, but very faint in Hubble Space Telescope images. This is likely because the molecules form in the shadows of the densest parts of the ring, where they are shielded from direct, intense radiation from the hot central star. "