NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope spots a huge star on the brink of going SUPERNOVA

This amazingly detailed image captures the rare sight of a massive star’s dying days before exploding into a supernova and collapsing into a black hole.

The Wolf-Rayet phase – lasting at most a few million years – is a key phase in the evolution of massive stellar giants.

Called WR 124, this one is located 15,000 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius and was captured in unprecedented detail by NASA’s new $10 billion superspace telescope, James Webb.

It is 30 times larger than our Sun and is currently shedding its outer layers in preparation for its imminent death.

As it does so, the star ejects a huge cloud of dust and gas that then cools to produce a beautiful halo that glows in infrared in this spectacular new image.

WR 124 has already thrown 10 suns worth of material into space and oIf the star runs out of heavy elements, it can merge and explode.

Massive stars race through their life cycles, only a few of which go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before going supernova.

In fact, only one in a hundred million is classified as a Wolf-Rayet – ferociously bright, hot stars doomed to imminent collapse in a supernova explosion that leaves behind a black hole.

The fact that the Wolf-Rayet stage is so rare and short makes this detection by Webb an important one.

It was one of the telescope’s first observations when it began collecting data in June 2022.

The image is important because it should help astronomers figure out exactly how dust behaves and whether the dust particles are large and numerous enough to survive the upcoming supernova.

Dust is an essential part of the universe and how it works.

It comes together to help planets form, protects stars as they form and allows molecules to form and clump together, like those that led to the building blocks of life on Earth.

Similar dying stars first littered the young universe with heavy elements forged in their cores – elements that are now common, including on our planet.

However, the universe operates on a “dust budget surplus,” and this has puzzled astronomers.

They say there is still more dust in the vast emptiness of space than current dust formation theories can account for.

NASA experts therefore hope that determining how dust behaves around Wolf-Rayet stars like WR 124 can help us figure out where all that extra dust is coming from.

Webb is key to the whole thing because his infrared vision can see past cosmic dust and glimpse the inner workings of stars like WR 124, which throw dust into space.

It’s a special trick that other space telescopes like the iconic Hubble can’t do.

NASA’s new telescope is able to use its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) to help observe stars like WR 124, as it contrasts the brightness of their stellar cores with the intricate detail of the fainter gas that surrounds them.

The telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) can then measure the gas and dust nebula from the ejecta surrounding the star.

Before Webb came along, astronomers lacked the most important detailed information they needed to investigate questions about dust production in environments like WR 124.

Now they hope to see if dust particles are large enough to survive a supernova and, in turn, become a major contributor to the overall dust budget.

“Webb’s detailed image of WR 124 preserves forever a short, turbulent time of transformation and promises future discoveries that will reveal the long-shrouded mysteries of cosmic dust,” NASA said.