Tell me why the stars do shine origin10/5/2023 ![]() ![]() Once massive stars have burned through all their hydrogen, they begin fusing helium into heavier elements-through a more energetic fusion reaction that raises powerful stellar winds. Stars are nature’s fusion reactors, shining from the energy released by fusing hydrogen to form helium atoms. But as time flies by, it will bloom outward in expanding shells or rings of gas and dust. Now “the nebula is hugging the star,” he says. The colorful cloud in the image-somewhat misleadingly called a planetary nebula-is only a few thousand years old. “This is the youngest one I know of,” he says. Moffat has studied Wolf-Rayet stars for decades. “We’ve caught it early,” explains Anthony Moffat, a retired astrophysicist, who previously observed WR 124 using the Hubble Space Telescope and was not involved in the recent JWST measurements. The dying star is at least 30 times the mass of our sun but is shrinking quickly as it blasts hot gas into the cold vacuum of space. Named WR 124, it’s found in the constellation Sagitta and lies about 15,000 light-years away from Earth. Recently NASA unveiled a rare image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of one such stellar giant-a Wolf-Rayet star in the final, fleeting stages of its life. Giant stars may be the ultimate example of “live fast, die young.” Unlike our own sun, which will shine for billions of years, more massive stars can burn through their thermonuclear fuel in only a few million years before sloughing off their outer layers and exploding in a dramatic supernova. ![]()
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