NASA's Webb Telescope Captures the Dust Clouds of Apep, Named for the Egyptian God of Chaos

""To find the holes the third star has cut like a knife through the dust, look for the central point of light and trace a V shape from about 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock," NASA says."

""The dust-producing Wolf-Rayet stars in Apep aren't exactly on a tranquil cruise," NASA says. "They are whipping through space and sending out dust at 1,200 to 2,000 miles per second.""

""Webb's data, combined with observations from the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile, confirmed that the two Wolf-Rayet stars sail past one another approximately every 190 years," says a statement. "Over each orbit, they make a close pass for 25 years, producing and spewing amorphous carbon dust.""

James Webb imaged coiled shells of dust around the Wolf-Rayet pair Apep, revealing multiple concentric shells that previous telescopes had not shown. A third massive supergiant star is gravitationally bound to the pair and carves V-shaped holes through dust shells emitted over the last 700 years. The two Wolf-Rayet stars produce amorphous carbon dust during a 25-year close pass every approximately 190 years and eject dust at 1,200–2,000 miles per second. Dense infrared-visible dust makes the shells prominent, clarifying the system's orbital and dust-production dynamics.

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