NASA's James Webb Space Telescope James Webb photographs a fading star

The NASA image is being praised for its capacity to provide new information about the beginnings of planets, constellations, and the universe as a whole.

The unusual and fleeting moment before a star in the constellation Sagittarius died and went supernova has been caught by NASA's Webb Space Telescope. The Wolf-Rayet star is seen in the photograph in unprecedented clarity, generating a dazzling purple halo as it exhales gas. It was unveiled on Tuesday at the South by Southwest festival in Austin, Texas. According to NASA, as the gas flows away from the star, it cools, and cosmic dust develops and glows in the infrared light that Webb can see.

According to the space agency, "massive stars speed through their lifecycles, and only some of them go through a brief Wolf-Rayet phase before becoming supernova," makes Webb's in-depth observations of this uncommon phase interesting to scientists. "What photographs like this depict are a star's dying moments, which are incredibly crucial in terms of stellar evolution and how the ingredients that make life possible," says space analyst Bill Harwood.

According to NASA, the fading star was one of the first discoveries discovered by the Webb telescope in June 2022. According to the space agency, the star, which is 15,000 light-years away, is 30 times as massive as our sun and has already, expelled enough material to support 10 suns.