NASA released the latest pictures from Webb. You can see a link to a dying start here:
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-033?Collection=First%20Images
I am not sure, how it is possible that after 24 years, it seems the dying star explosion is still in a very similar size and shape. Can someone please what exactly we are observing in this picture.
In: 2
What you’re seeing is a shell of gas cast off by one of the two central stars at the end of its life. This happens to most medium-mass stars, and will probably happen to our Sun at the end of its life in about five billion years.
The cast-off layers float out into space at speeds that are very high by human standards, but the distances in space are so vast that it still takes a long time for them to dissipate. 24 years, in cosmic terms, is the blink of an eye.
Nebulas like that one last for maybe thousands of years before they dissipate. That’s a long time in human terms, but for a star (whose lifetimes are usually measured in the tens of millions to single-digit trillions of years), it’s nothing at all. If you prefer, this star is already dead, but its corpse is not yet cold. (Actually, in a broader sense, [*no* stars’ corpses are cold yet](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_dwarf) because the Universe isn’t old enough.)
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