Today’s Image of the Day from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope features the most detailed view to date of the planetary nebula NGC 1514.

The nebula sits about 1,500 light-years away in the Taurus constellation. Webb’s latest observation reveals two dusty rings wrapped around a fading star system, surrounded by orange arcs and glowing gas.

This scene isn’t new – it’s been evolving for at least 4,000 years. Until now, much of its structure remained hidden. Thanks to Webb’s powerful mid-infrared camera, scientists can finally see the full extent of the nebula’s complexity.

Dust rings and broken shells

At the center of NGC 1514, two stars locked in a tight nine-year orbit are driving this dramatic display. One of them – formerly several times the mass of our Sun – has shed its outer layers as it reached the end of its life. 

What’s left is a hot, compact white dwarf star blasting out faster, weaker winds that may have swept earlier material into thin, fragile shells.

What Webb has uncovered is a tangled mess of dust, much of which was invisible to previous telescopes. The rings now appear fuzzy and uneven, like clumps floating through space. 

Material ejected from a dying star

Some areas show distinct holes near the center, marking where faster material appears to have punched through the older gas. The telescope also picked up signs of oxygen in the nebula’s pink core, especially around the edges of the holes.

“Before Webb, we weren’t able to detect most of this material, let alone observe it so clearly,” said Mike Ressler, a project scientist for Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. 

Ressler first spotted the rings in 2010 using an earlier infrared mission, but they were faint and hard to analyze. “With MIRI’s data, we can now comprehensively examine the turbulent nature of this nebula,” he said.

The nebula’s unusual shape

Unlike the perfectly round shapes many might expect, NGC 1514 isn’t a sphere. Webb’s observations show that the whole formation is tilted at about 60 degrees – like a can being tipped over – but its true shape is more like an hourglass with the ends sliced off. 

Subtle pinches of dust in shallow V-shapes give clues to this structure, particularly near the top left and bottom right of the image.

The bizarre shape may be due to the interaction between the two stars. During the period when the larger star was losing its outer layers, its companion may have drifted extremely close. 

“That interaction can lead to shapes that you wouldn’t expect,” said David Jones, a senior scientist who confirmed the central binary system in 2017. “Instead of producing a sphere, this interaction might have formed these rings.”

Patchy rings with a fuzzy appearance 

Between the rings, dim and semi-transparent clouds stretch through the nebula, adding body and giving hints at the object’s full three-dimensional shape. 

The rings themselves aren’t evenly lit – they fade out toward the top right and bottom left. This patchiness, along with their fuzzy appearance, points to their makeup: very small dust grains.

“We think the rings are primarily made up of very small dust grains,” Ressler explained. “When those grains are hit by ultraviolet light from the white dwarf star, they heat up ever so slightly, which we think makes them just warm enough to be detected by Webb in mid-infrared light.”

A simple mix of ingredients

Notably, the nebula lacks something usually seen in similar objects: carbon and its more complex molecules. 

Most planetary nebulae contain polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons – carbon-rich compounds that resemble soot. But Webb didn’t find any trace of them in NGC 1514.

The absence of the molecules could be due to the swirling motion of the two central stars, which may have prevented more complex molecules from forming. This also allows more light from the stars to escape, helping to illuminate the faint, outer rings.

Glowing shells of dying stars

Astronomers have been studying NGC 1514 for centuries. Back in 1790, William Herschel described it as the first deep-sky object he saw that looked truly cloudy – not just a collection of stars. He couldn’t resolve it into individual points of light the way he could with star clusters. 

That cloudy impression was one of the earliest clues pointing toward the existence of planetary nebulae – the glowing shells of gas that dying stars leave behind.

Now, Webb has revealed the full extent of the cloud Herschel saw. NGC 1514 has turned out to be a complex, dynamic structure still shifting over time.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Michael Ressler (NASA-JPL), Dave Jones (IAC)

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