Sep 3, 2022 10:43 PM
https://www.vice.com/en/article/qjk38p/a...s-in-space
EXCERPTS: . . . In a photograph of the star WR140, as pointed out by citizen scientist Judy Schmidt who reposted the image from the automated @JWSTPhotoBot on Twitter, a spiral of rings and rays fan out from the star’s bright white center. The rings aren’t perfectly circular, but look more like rounded squares, and not even astronomers seem to know what to do with it.
“I think it's just nature doing something that is simple, but when we look at it from only one viewpoint it seems impossible, at first, to understand that it is a natural phenomenon," Schmidt told Space.com, which reported on the bizarre image. "Why is it shaped the way it is? Why is it so regular?"
[...] Ryan Lau, an assistant astronomer at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab who led the program that gathered raw data on this and other JWST images, replied that “those nested ‘squircular’ rings are real,” and added that he and his colleagues have a paper coming on the subject that might shed more light on the rings’ odd shape... (MORE - missing details)
https://youtu.be/xjBzxZ1Bwgg
https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/xjBzxZ1Bwgg
EXCERPTS: . . . In a photograph of the star WR140, as pointed out by citizen scientist Judy Schmidt who reposted the image from the automated @JWSTPhotoBot on Twitter, a spiral of rings and rays fan out from the star’s bright white center. The rings aren’t perfectly circular, but look more like rounded squares, and not even astronomers seem to know what to do with it.
“I think it's just nature doing something that is simple, but when we look at it from only one viewpoint it seems impossible, at first, to understand that it is a natural phenomenon," Schmidt told Space.com, which reported on the bizarre image. "Why is it shaped the way it is? Why is it so regular?"
[...] Ryan Lau, an assistant astronomer at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab who led the program that gathered raw data on this and other JWST images, replied that “those nested ‘squircular’ rings are real,” and added that he and his colleagues have a paper coming on the subject that might shed more light on the rings’ odd shape... (MORE - missing details)
https://youtu.be/xjBzxZ1Bwgg