Dust patterns around a binary star, revealed in stunning detail by the James Webb Space Telescope, show the pressure starlight can put on particles in space.
Astronomers have long known that the dust emerging from the star WR 140 and its companion is formed by gas from these two stars colliding and condensing into soot. But images of the pair taken over the course of 16 years show that the dust is accelerating as it travels away from the stars.
The revelation came from comparing the positions of concentric dust shells year to year and deducing a speed. The researchers’ calculations show that the force accelerating the dust is the pressure exerted by light radiated from the stars, says Han, of the University of Cambridge. “Radiation pressure [becomes apparent] only when we put all the images next to each other.”
A computer simulation that takes radiation pressure from starlight into account shows how a dust plume emerges from a pair of orbiting stars .The patterns don’t completely surround the stars because the distance between the stars changes as they orbit one another. When the stars are far apart, the density of the colliding gas is too low to condense to dust — an effect the researchers expected.
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