There is more to the Southern Ring Nebula than meets the eye.
star. When a star somewhat bigger than the sun runs out of hydrogen fuel in its core, it swells into a red giant, which can be hundreds of times wider than the original star.
It was MIRI's view that immediately sparked the astronomers' interest. Instead of the one large and one tiny star known from Hubble's view, two stars of equal sizes emerged. And strangely, the star that the astronomers knew as the white dwarf was unexpectedly red. "White dwarfs are hot, they don't shine in this wavelength," De Marco said."So, immediately, we knew that there must be a lot of cool dust enshrouding the white dwarf, there is a cool disk of dust."
An image of the Southern Ring Nebula by the James Webb Space Telescope's MIRI instrument reveals that one of the central stars is oddly red. Immediately the astronomers wondered how the dust disk came into being. Such disks are usually made of material from a smaller star orbiting a more massive star, whose gravity disturbs the companion. But the known bright companion of the white dwarf at the center of the Southern Ring Nebula was too far away to be affected by the white dwarf. The only plausible conclusion, De Marco said, was that another, invisible small star was orbiting the white dwarf much closer in, releasing the dust.
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