James Webb: Nasa space telescope delivers spectacular pictures

You’ll have seen versions of this in those coffee table books of stunning Hubble images. The Southern Ring, or “Eight-Burst” nebula, is a giant expanding sphere of gas and dust that’s been lit up by a dying star in the centre. As stars age, they change the way they make energy and eject their outer layers. And then, when the star gets very hot again, it energises all that material it had previously spurned. The Southern Ring is nearly half a light-year in diameter and is located about 2,000 light-years from Earth. This type of structure is called a “planetary nebula”, but it actually has nothing to do with planets. It’s a misnomer from the early days of telescopes when they didn’t have anything like the resolution they have today. Just as Webb wants to see how stars are born, it wants to see how they die, also.

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