Amazing Rings: Intersecting Stars Create Spectacular Gas Rings

[Hornbein]

Two stars with orbits that almost intersect create concentric rings of gas.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Are you sure? This looks a lot like diffraction to me.

Sometimes a red dwarf is just a sausage.

 

[Hornbein]

Are you sure? This looks a lot like diffraction to me.

Sometimes a red dwarf is just a sausage.

Anton is a serious and reliable source.

 

[Vanadium 50]

Those rings still look a lot like diffraction to me.

 

[malawi_glenn]

https://arxiv.org/abs/astro-ph/0202315 (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1086/340005)

WR140 is interesting to study because of this feature, it is not like they just randomally observed that star with JWST and saw something crazy and new. This was expected to be seen https://webbtelescope.org/contents/media/videos/2020/57/1297-Video?news=true (shows a cute animation)

Even more info about WR140: https://www.roe.ac.uk/~pmw/Wr140int.htm

The radial spikes however, are an artefact on JWST imaging

 

[Vanadium 50]

But that paper doesn't show the regulalrly spaced rings.

 

[malawi_glenn]

But that paper doesn't show the regulalrly spaced rings.

The one from 2002? No because one did not have the equipment to take such images back then on WR140, but one understood its features. It is a well known phenomena, but rare (because WR stars are rare). When I took course "stellar physics" in 2007, the teacher had a seminar for grad students about WR stars which he invented us mere mortal undergrads to attend "just for fun". I think I was the only undergrad student who attendend.

Here is a paper about the WR104 star
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/230919834_The_Prototype_Colliding-Wind_Pinwheel_WR_104

diagram:

image(s) from the Keck Observatory
https://stories.scienceinpublic.com.au/stories-of-astronomy-2012/keck-telescope/
http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~gekko/pinwheel.html
"The technique will be used on NASA’s successor to the Hubble Space Telescope: the James Webb Space Telescope"

Here is WR112
https://webarchive.gemini.edu/media/pr_images/final-wide-shot.jpg (by Gemini observatory)
its pattern is more compliacted because its motion is not perpendicular to our line of sight
https://scitechdaily.com/evolved-bi...of-dusty-embers-from-a-massive-stellar-forge/

Note that this is IR wavelenght, in order to get pictures we can see we have to perform imageprocessing. This is a guy who has made such pic for WR140 using JWST data

zoomed in:

does not look like diffraction to me.