James Webb Space Telescope's image featuring mysterious starry rings baffles astronomers

The NASA-ESA-CSA-made James Webb Space Telescope has surprised astronomers yet again, but this time it has left them scratching their heads. This has happened because of a new photograph captured by the world’s most powerful observatory of a distant star named WR 140. The picture was taken using Webb's Mid-Infrared (MIRI) instrument in July and shows mysterious ripples tainted in slight red colour around the star. 

The star is also seen with six major spikes around it which are called diffraction spikes created by the telescope itself.   

The picture was shared by citizen scientist Judy Schmidt who works on the processing of images clicked by observatories and has contributed to the development of several Webb images. “Nope, I don't know what this is. Some kind of spiral nebula around WR 140. I'm sure we'll find out more later”, she tweeted. 

What we know about WR 140 is that it lies 5,600 light-years away from Earth, in the constellation Cygnus, and is called a Wolf-Rayet star by astronomers. Moreover, a Wolf-Rayet star is one that has pushed an enormous amount of hydrogen into outer space and remains shrouded by a thick amount of dust. 

Talking about the image, Mark McCaughrean, a Webb Telescope scientist and a science advisor to the European Space Agency (ESA), tweeted and said that the image is 'real' but 'bonkers'. "The six-pointed blue structure is an artefact due to optical diffraction from the bright star WR140 in this JWST MIRI image. But red curvy-yet-boxy stuff is real, a series of shells around WR140. Actually in space. Around a star", McCaughrean tweeted. 

Henceforth, the astronomers will carry out follow-up studies to gather more details about the contents around the star in the picture. So far, NASA and its partners have released images of several cosmic objects ranging from exoplanets to galaxies and nebulae. Most recently, the agencies shared the first-ever picture of an exoplanet captured by Webb. Dubbed HIP 65426 b, this exoplanet is about six to twelve times the mass of Jupiter and is located about 385 light-years from Earth.