Future Blast

Shells of gas and dust race outward from WR 124, a hot, massive star about 15,000 light-years away, in this James Webb Space Telescope image. Known as a Wolf-Rayet star, it is about 30 times as massive as the Sun. WR 124 is tens of thousands of degrees hotter than the Sun and hundreds of thousands times brighter. The star has already shed enough gas to make 10 stars as massive as the Sun, forming the surrounding nebula, which is about 10 light-years across. Fairly soon -- within the next million years or so -- the star is likely to explode as a supernova. Webb imaged the star and nebula at infrared wavelengths, which are invisible to the human eye, and astronomers assigned colors to different wavelengths to show the nebula's structure and composition. [NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/Webb ERO Production Team]