Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Emma Lieb (University of Denver), Ryan Lau (NSF's NOIRLab), Jennifer Hoffman (University of Denver); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Watch dust move in space!

Compare the two mid-infrared images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope of Wolf-Rayet 140, a system of dust shells ejected by two massive stars that are in an elongated orbit.

Look to the top right of the first two images. Two triangles are matched up to show how much difference 14 months makes: The dust is racing away from the central stars at almost 1% the speed of light and no longer lines up in the third image.

When the winds of the massive stars, which are buried within the white central region in the first and second images, collide and that material compresses, it forms carbon-rich dust that moves away from the stars. This occurs for a few months during each eight-year orbit, which is one reason why the dust isn’t “sprayed” equally around the stars to form complete shells.

Wolf-Rayet 140 lies just over 5,000 light-years away in our Milky Way galaxy.

Watch the video to see the dust’s movement.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-103

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: http://stsci.edu/copyright/