NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has spotted cosmic dust rings.  NASA's Webb finds that a star duo forms 'Fingerprint' in space.

NASA's Webb captured a new stunning image that shows at least 17 dust rings created by a rare type of star and its companion locked in a celestial dance.

The new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a spectacular cosmic sight :  at least 17 concentric dust rings emanating from a pair of stars. 

The image also shows how sensitive this telescope is.  Before, we could only see 2 dust rings using ground-based telescopes. We now have seen at least 17 of them.

This star duo (or pair of stars) is collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140, and they are just over 5,000 light-years away from Earth.

Each ring was formed when two stars came near to each other and their stellar winds (gas streams they blow into space) meet, compressing the gas and forming dust.

About every eight years, the stars' orbits bring them together; the dust loops serve as timekeepers, much like the growth of rings on a tree's trunk.

What is Wolf-Rayet star

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A Wolf-Rayet star is an O-type star that was born with at least 25 times the mass of our Sun and is reaching the end of its life when it will likely collapse and produce a black hole.

This image shows the relative size of the Sun, upper left, compared to the two stars in the system known as Wolf-Rayet 140.  The O-type star is roughly 30 times the mass of the Sun, while its companion is about 10 times the mass of the Sun.

A Wolf-Rayet star, which is burning hotter than in its youth, generates powerful winds that push huge amounts of gas into space. 

It's possible that through this process, the Wolf-Rayet star in this particular pair may have shed more than half of its original mass.

Forming Dust in the Wind

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Hydrogen, the most common element found in stars, cannot form dust on its own. It needs specific situations and ingredients.

But because Wolf-Rayet stars shed so much mass, they also expel more complex elements including carbon, which are generally found deep in a star’s interior.

The heavy elements in the wind cool as they travel into space and are then compressed where the winds from both stars meet.

Although many other Wolf-Rayet systems also form dust, none is known to make rings like Wolf-Rayet 140 does. 

Wolf-Rayet 140 forms the unique ring pattern because the orbit of the Wolf-Rayet star in WR 140 is elongated rather than circular.

Only when the stars are near enough together – around the same distance as Earth and the Sun – and their winds clash is the gas get pressurized enough to produce dust.  Wolf-Rayet binaries with circular orbits can continuously produce dust.

Lau and his colleagues believe WR 140's winds also swept the surrounding area clear of residual material they could have collided with, which may be why the rings remain so pristine rather than smudged or dispersed.

There are likely even more rings that have become so faint and scattered that not even Webb can detect them in the data.

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