Credit: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, A. Pagan

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s view of planetary nebula NGC 6072 in the near-infrared shows a complex scene of multiple outflows expanding out at different angles from a dying star at the center of the scene.

There is one stretching from roughly 11 to 5 o’clock, another from 1 to 7 o’clock, and possibly a third from 12 to 6 o’clock. These outflows push gas toward the equatorial plane, forming a disk that appears to span from 9 to 3 o’clock.

Astronomers suspect there is at least one other star interacting with the material cast off by the central dying star, creating the abnormal appearance of this planetary nebula.

In this image, the red areas represent cool molecular gas, for example, molecular hydrogen.

Read the full image description.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://science.nasa.gov/missions/webb/nasas-webb-traces-details-of-complex-planetary-nebula/

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: https://www.stsci.edu/copyright