A Dying Star’s Fiery Farewell
The James Webb Space Telescope has unveiled breathtaking new images of NGC 6537, better known as the Red Spider Nebula, revealing an intricate structure of glowing gas, vast lobes, and possibly a hidden stellar companion at its core.
The nebula, located about 3,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Sagittarius, is a planetary nebula — the remnant of a dying star that once resembled our Sun. As such stars exhaust their fuel, they swell into red giants before shedding their outer layers into space. What remains is the star’s exposed core, which emits ultraviolet radiation that makes the surrounding gases glow in brilliant colors.
This final phase of a star’s life lasts only tens of thousands of years — a fleeting moment in cosmic terms — but it produces some of the most striking sights in the universe.
Webb’s Infrared Vision Transforms the View
Previous observations by the Hubble Space Telescope showed the Red Spider Nebula as a faint, blue-hued hourglass shape. Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), however, reveals something entirely new: a glowing red central star surrounded by a thick disc of hot dust. This material, invisible to optical telescopes, blazes brightly in infrared light, hinting at complex interactions near the star’s core.
Astronomers believe these details point to a hidden binary companion — a second star whose gravity may be shaping the nebula’s distinct form. Similar hourglass or butterfly-like patterns in other planetary nebulae, such as the Butterfly Nebula, are known to arise from binary systems where one star’s outflows sculpt the other’s ejected material.
The Spider’s “Legs” and Turbulent Heart
The nebula’s most striking feature — its long, leg-like lobes that extend nearly three light-years each — are now captured in unprecedented detail. Webb’s data shows these limbs as closed, bubble-like structures filled with molecular hydrogen, formed by centuries of expanding gas.
At the nebula’s center, a dramatic purple “S” shape glows where powerful jets of ionized iron shoot outward from the core. These jets crash into older layers of material, creating rippling shockwaves that sculpt the nebula’s distinctive patterns. The interactions are so violent that they continue to reshape the structure even now, thousands of years after the star first began to die.
Clues to the Future of Our Sun
This research, led by astrophysicist Joel Kastner and his team, is part of a larger effort to understand how dying stars form such elaborate shapes in their final stages. By studying the outflows, dust discs, and hidden companions of planetary nebulae, scientists can reconstruct the processes that drive stellar death across the galaxy.
For Earth’s own Sun, which will undergo a similar transformation in about five billion years, the Red Spider Nebula offers a glimpse into its eventual fate — a spectacular, glowing farewell visible across the cosmos.
“Webb is allowing us to see the full profile of the star’s afterlife for the first time,” said Kastner. “It’s a reminder that even in death, stars create beauty.”