A rarely seen prelude to a Supernova shows a super-bright, massive Wolf-Rayet star in a composite image taken by the James Webb Telescope. The star, WR 124, is 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius and is 30 times the mass of our Sun. As the ejected gas moves away from the star and cools, cosmic dust forms and glows in the infrared light detectable by Webb. The Wolf-Rayet phase is a fleeting stage that only some stars go through soon before they explode. The origin of cosmic dust that can survive a supernova blast is of great interest to astronomers for multiple reasons. Dust shelters forming stars, gathers together to help form planets, and serves as a platform for molecules to form and clump together, including the building blocks of life on Earth.
NASA/ESA