NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has detected rings of cosmic dust.

An image captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope unveils a remarkable phenomenon: an array of 17 concentric dust rings originating from a binary star system positioned approximately 5,300 light-years distant from Earth. This intricate spectacle emerged as a result of the stars' close proximity, engendering the convergence of their respective stellar winds—emanations of expelled gas—which in turn led to the compression of certain gas constituents into dust particles. Identified as Wolf-Rayet 140, these stars' elliptical orbits bring them into periodic alignment roughly once every eight years. Analogous to the growth rings discerned in tree trunks, these dusty loops function as a temporal ledger, encapsulating more than a century's worth of intricate stellar interactions.

Wolf-Rayet 140 stands apart from its counterparts in the unique configuration of its dust rings. The elliptical nature of the stars' orbits induces a continuous alteration in their separation distance, permitting the formation of dust solely during phases of proximity. The quantity of dust generated during these encounters exhibits variability, resulting in an arrangement that lacks perfect symmetry. A particularly prominent region of dust formation is observed as a luminous feature recurring at the 2 o’clock position, underscoring the complexity of this phenomenon.