Concentric square-like rings with rounded corners radiate evenly and gradually fade around the star WR140, located 5,600 light-years from Earth.
Astronomer Judy Schmidt shared an image on social media platform Twitter on August 29, showcasing the mysterious concentric rings surrounding the distant star WR140, capturing significant public interest.
Strange concentric shells surrounding the distant star WR 140 captured by the James Webb Telescope. (Image: NASA/ESA/CSA/Ryan Lau /JWST ERS Team/Judy Schmidt)
The image taken by James Webb in July shows WR140 surrounded by concentric rings resembling ripples, radiating evenly and gradually fading. These rings have a peculiar shape, not entirely round but somewhat square, leading some to speculate about extraterrestrial involvement.
“I believe it’s just nature doing something simple, but when we look from a certain angle, it seems really hard to understand that it’s a natural phenomenon. Why does it have that shape? Why is it so uniform?” Schmidt remarked.
Mark McCaughrean, an interdisciplinary scientist with the James Webb Space Telescope Science Working Group and a scientific advisor for the European Space Agency (ESA), described the structure as “crazy.”
“The six sharp blue spikes are an optical diffraction artifact from the bright star WR140 in the image. But the red structure that is both round and square is real; it is a series of shells surrounding WR140. They are indeed out there in space, surrounding a star,” he wrote on Twitter.
McCaughrean noted that WR140 is a Wolf-Rayet star, a type of star that has expelled most of its hydrogen into space. It is also surrounded by dust. A companion star may have “sculpted” the dust into these unusual shells.
Ryan Lau, an astronomer at NOIRLab, along with his colleagues, is investigating this mysterious phenomenon. “Those rounded square shapes are real,” Lau stated. New research has been submitted and will be published soon, helping interested individuals gain a better understanding of this phenomenon.
WR140 is located in the constellation Cygnus (The Swan), approximately 5,600 light-years from Earth. It is a variable star, dimming and brightening periodically. It remains unclear whether the star’s variability is related to the mysterious ripples. However, the latest images demonstrate the capability of the $10 billion James Webb Telescope—the most powerful observatory ever launched into space, renowned for its superior and exceptionally sharp observational abilities.
