Ş­a­ş­ı­r­t­ı­c­ı­ ­“­Ö­r­ü­m­c­e­k­ ­A­ğ­ı­”­ ­Y­ı­l­d­ı­z­ı­ ­K­e­ş­f­e­d­i­l­d­i­ ­–­ ­B­i­r­ ­U­z­a­y­l­ı­ ­M­e­g­a­ ­Y­a­p­ı­s­ı­ ­m­ı­?­

Ş­a­ş­ı­r­t­ı­c­ı­ ­“­Ö­r­ü­m­c­e­k­ ­A­ğ­ı­”­ ­Y­ı­l­d­ı­z­ı­ ­K­e­ş­f­e­d­i­l­d­i­ ­–­ ­B­i­r­ ­U­z­a­y­l­ı­ ­M­e­g­a­ ­Y­a­p­ı­s­ı­ ­m­ı­?­


JWST görüntüsü ve WR140 modeli. Kaynak: Soldaki resim: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/JPL-Caltech. Sağdaki resim: Yinuo Han/Peter Tuthill/Ryan Lau

James Webb Telescope tarafından yakalanan şaşırtıcı bir görüntü açıkladı.

tarafından yakalanan eşmerkezli geometrik dalgalanmalarla çevrili uzak yıldız WR140’ın garip bir görüntüsü.[{” attribute=””>James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in July has perplexed astronomers around the world, even sparking frenzied internet speculation that it could be evidence of an alien megastructure light-years across.

The perplexing picture was captured soon after JWST began scientific operations and published its first full batch of images. It rapidly sparked a heated debate on the internet, with some speculating that the enormous ripples were caused by aliens. The picture was described as “bonkers” by Mark McCaughrean, a senior adviser for science and exploration at the European Space Agency and a member of the James Webb Space Telescope Science Working Group.

JWST Image of Concentric Dust Rings Around WR140

WR140 JWST image of concentric dust rings emanating from the WR140 binary. Credit: NASA-ESA-CSA-STScI-JPL-Caltech

However, two Australian astronomers explain in two companion papers recently published in Nature and Nature Astronomy that the 17 concentric rings seen circling the star are actually a series of mammoth dust shells created by the cyclic interaction of a pair of hot stars, one of which is a dying Wolf-Rayet, locked together in a tight orbit.

“Like clockwork, WR140 puffs out a sculpted smoke ring every eight years, which is then inflated in the stellar wind like a balloon,” said Professor Peter Tuthill from the Sydney Institute for Astronomy at the University of Sydney, a co-author in both papers. “Eight years later, as the binary returns in its orbit, another ring appears, the same as the one before, streaming out into space inside the bubble of the previous one, like a set of giant nested Russian dolls.”

3D Model of WR140 Shells After 18 Orbits

3D model of WR140 shells after 18 orbits (or 144 years) of cyclic dust formation. Credit: Yinuo Han/Peter Tuthill/Ryan Lau

The WR140 pair is made up of a huge Wolf-Rayet star and an even more massive blue supergiant star that are gravitationally bound in an eight-year orbit. While all stars produce stellar winds, those produced by Wolf-Rayet stars are more akin to a stellar hurricane. Elements in the wind, such as carbon, condense as soot, which stays hot enough to glow brightly in the infrared. The dust clouds, like smoke caught by the wind, provide something for telescopes to watch as they follow the flow.

Because the two stars are in elliptical rather than circular orbits, dust production turns on and off as WR140’s binary companion nears and then departs the point of closest approach. Based on data collected with other telescopes since 2006, Professor Tuthill and his former student Yinuo Han – now at the University of Cambridge’s Institute of Astronomy – created a three-dimensional model of the dust plume’s geometry.

Near Infrared Imagery of WR140’s Expanding Circumstellar Dust Structure

Near-infrared imagery of WR140’s expanding circumstellar dust structure. Credit: Yinuo Han & Peter Tuthill

That model, created for the Nature paper of which Han is the lead author, turned out to perfectly explain the bizarre results obtained by the JWST in July. Thanks to this and other contributions, both Han and Professor Tuthill also became co-authors of the Nature Astronomy paper with the new Webb data.

What’s more, in their Nature paper, Han and Professor Tuthill showed – for the first time – direct evidence of intense starlight driving into matter and accelerating it, after tracking titanic plumes of dust generated by the violent interactions between two colossal stars over 16 years.

Illustration of the WR140 Binary Star System

Illustration of the WR140 binary star system. Credit: Amanda Smith/IoA/University of Cambridge

It’s known that starlight carries momentum, exerting a push on matter known as ‘radiation pressure’. Astronomers often see the aftermath of this in the form of matter coasting at high speed around the cosmos, but have never caught the process in the act. Direct observation of acceleration due to forces other than gravity is rarely witnessed, and never in a stellar environment like this.

“It’s hard to see starlight causing acceleration because the force fades with distance, and other forces quickly take over,” said Han. “To witness acceleration at the level that it becomes measurable, the material needs to be reasonably close to the star or the source of the radiation pressure needs to be extra strong. WR140 is a binary star whose ferocious radiation field supercharges these effects, placing them within reach of our high-precision data.”

Relative Size of the Wolf Rayet Star

The relative size of the Wolf-Rayet star, its O-type blue supergiant, and the Sun, at top left. Credit: JPL-Caltech

Using imaging technology known as interferometry, which was able to act like a zoom lens for the 10-meter mirror of the Keck telescope in Hawaii, the Australians were able to recover sufficiently sharp images of WR140 for the study.

They discovered that the dust does not stream out from the star with the wind forming a hazy ball, as had been thought. Instead, the dust condenses adjacent to where the winds from the two stars collide, on the surface of a cone-shaped shock front between them. Because the orbiting binary star is in constant motion, the shock front also rotates. The sooty plume gets wrapped into a spiral, in the same way that droplets form a spiral in a garden sprinkler.

Raw and Processed 3D Model of WR140 Shells

Raw and processed 3D model of WR140 shells after 18 orbits (or 144 years) of cyclic dust formation. Credit: Yinuo Han/Peter Tuthill/Ryan Lau

“In the absence of external forces, each dust spiral should expand at a constant speed,” said Han. “We were puzzled at first because we could not get our model to fit the observations until we finally realized that we were seeing something new. The data did not fit because the expansion speed wasn’t constant, but rather that it was accelerating. We’d caught that for the first time on camera.”

Once they added the acceleration of dust by starlight into their three-dimensional model of the WR140 binary, it explained their observational data perfectly. And also ended up explaining the strange concentric rings later spotted with JWST.


Bu animasyon, ikili yıldız sistemi WR 140’taki tozun sarmal oluşumunu tasvir etmek için yörünge düzleminin üstünden aşağıya bakıyor. Bir Wolf-Rayet yıldızı—yaşlanan büyük kütleli bir yıldızın yoğun çekirdeği—ve O-tipi bir yıldız birbirlerinin yörüngesinde dönüyorlar. yaklaştıkça çarpışan yıldız rüzgarları. Birbirine karışan yıldız malzemesi, soğudukça toz oluşturan O yıldızını geçerek geriye doğru savrulur. Kredi: NASAESA ve J. Olmsted (STScI)

Profesör Tuthill, “Bir anlamda, çıkışın nedeninin bu olması gerektiğini her zaman biliyorduk, ancak fiziği bu şekilde iş başında görebileceğimizi asla hayal etmemiştim,” dedi. “Şimdi verilere baktığımda, WR140’ın dumanının tozdan yapılmış dev bir yelken gibi açıldığını görüyorum. Rüzgara kapılan bir yat gibi, yıldızdan akan foton rüzgarını yakaladığında, ileriye doğru ani bir sıçrama yapıyor.”

JWST’nin artık faaliyette olmasıyla, araştırmacılar WR140 ve benzeri sistemler hakkında çok daha fazla şey öğrenebilecekler. ABD Ulusal Optik-Kızılötesi Astronomi Araştırma Laboratuvarı Astronom Yardımcısı ve Nature Astronomy’de yayınlanan JWST çalışmasının baş yazarı Dr. “Artık, Wolf-Rayet fiziği dünyasına yeni bir pencere açarak, bunun gibi gözlemleri yerden çok daha kolay yapabileceğiz.”

Referans: Yinuo Han, Peter G. Tuthill, Ryan M. Lau ve Anthony Soulain tarafından yazılan “Genişleyen WR140 toz kabuğunda radyasyon kaynaklı ivme”, 12 Ekim 2022, Doğa.
DOI: 10.1038/s41586-022-05155-5

Referans: Ryan M. Lau, Matthew J. Hankins, Yinuo Han, Ioannis Argyriou, Michael F. Corcoran, Jan J. Eldridge, Izumi Endo, Ori D tarafından “JWST ile gözlemlenen Wolf-Rayet ikili WR 140 etrafındaki yuvalanmış toz kabukları” Fox, Macarena Garcia Marin, Theodore R. Gull, Olivia C. Jones, Kenji Hamaguchi, Astrid Lamberts, David R. Law, Thomas Madura, Sergey V. Marchenko, Hideo Matsuhara, Anthony FJ Moffat, Mark R. Morris, Patrick W Morris, Takashi Onaka, Michael E. Ressler, Noel D. Richardson, Christopher MP Russell, Joel Sanchez-Bermudez, Nathan Smith, Anthony Soulain, Ian R. Stevens, Peter Tuthill, Gerd Weigelt, Peredur M. Williams ve Ryodai Yamaguchi 12 Ekim 2022, Doğa Astronomisi.
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01812-x


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