Hubble Space Telescope Spotted Something Scary [Video]

Just in time for Halloween, the red giant star CW Leonis offers us a view of orange-red “cobwebs” that are dusty clouds of sooty carbon engulfing the dying star. Credit: ESA/Hubble, NASA, and Toshiya Ueta (University of Denver), Hyosun Kim (KASI)

Creepy Look At A Star Weaving A Dust Web

The drama of death among stars can look pretty eerie at times. This photo of the aging red giant star CW Leonis seems like something out of a Halloween tale. The star looks like it’s entrapped inside wispy orange spider webs that wrap around the star. Beams of light shine through the dust, like sunbeams on a partly cloudy day. As it runs out of fuel, the star “burps” shells of sooty carbon that escape into space. The carbon was cooked up in the star’s core as a waste product of nuclear fusion. Anyone with a fireplace knows that soot is a nuisance. But carbon ejected into space provides raw material for the formation of future stars, planets, and maybe even life. On Earth, complex biological molecules consist of carbon atoms bonded with other common elements.

This is a time-lapse set of images of the aging red giant star CW Leonis, taken on three dates: 2001, 2011, and 2016. The star is embedded inside gossamer cobwebs of dust encircling the star. These are really shells of carbon dust blown off the star. As they expand into space they change shape, as seen between the Hubble Space Telescope Spotted Something Scary [Video]