Cosmic Dust Rings Spotted by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

Approximately 5,300 light-years away from Earth, a pair of stars can be seen emitting at least 17 concentric dust rings in a picture from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Each ring was formed when the stars were close enough to each other for their stellar winds to collide, causing some of the gas to condense into dust.

These dusty loops, collectively known as Wolf-Rayet 140, are brought together by the orbits of the stars roughly once every eight years, so they serve as timekeepers like the growth rings of a tree trunk: More than a century of star interactions are revealed by the 17 rings. While other Wolf-Rayet stars also emit dust, Wolf-Rayet 140 is the only pair that has been observed to produce rings.