James Webb Telescope captures dying stars that look like 'twined snakes'

The Apep Nebula, studied by a team of astronomers based in Australia, is considered one of the most impressive stellar structures ever seen.

The most massive stars violently shed their outer layers before exploding into supernovas at the end of their lives, leaving only their massive cores behind. These stars are called Wolf-Rayet stars, in honor of the astronomers who discovered them.

When the powerful stellar winds of these stars collide with the winds of weaker stars in binary systems, cold carbon-rich regions form. These environments are where carbon dust first emerged in the universe—in a sense, the birthplace of our fundamental building blocks.

Normally, these stars would expel dust in spirals, creating sprinkler-like plumes across space. But Apep didn't fit that mold.

According to new JWST data, Apep isn't a single powerful star. It's composed of two equally powerful Wolf-Rayet stars. This binary system creates a more obtuse cone-shaped dust structure, rather than the classic spiral, that resembles a windsock.

It was also unclear whether a third, distant star discovered in 2018 belonged to the system. However, new data confirms that this star is also connected to the system.

In images obtained with JWST's MIRI infrared camera, hot structures are shown in blue and cold structures in red. Three distinct dust shells are visible as slowly cooling outer layers.

Work by Macquarie University graduate student Ryan White has developed a fast computer model to analyse the orbits of stars.

This model revealed a "bite-shaped" gap in the dust shells. It was understood that this gap was created by the wind from the third star.

This finding scientifically proved that Apep is not just a binary star system, but a triple star system.

Another study, led by Yinuo Han of Caltech, showed how the dust had cooled and the system was farther away than we thought. This suggested that the stars were actually much brighter but undermined the previous "slow wind, fast rotation" hypothesis.

Researchers emphasize that systems like Apep are of great importance not only in understanding the death of stars but also in understanding the origin of carbon and therefore life in the universe.

Scientists say that these discoveries are extraordinary from both scientific and aesthetic perspectives, saying, "These complex structures formed by the violence of star death are of a kind that would fascinate even Newton."