New image captures glowing shock waves in the Helix Nebula
Data was taken with the MOTHRA telescope, which is still under construction The post New image captures glowing shock waves in the Helix Nebula appeared first on Physics World .
Astronomers have unveiled a stunning composite image of the dying star’s remnants in the Helix Nebula, a bright ring of gas located 650 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Resembling a giant eye, the nebula’s ring formed from material expelled by a star nearing its end of life. Central to the nebula is the white dwarf, the remaining stellar core.
The Modular Optical Telephoto Hyperspectral Robotic Array (MOTHRA), located at the El Sauce Observatory in Chile, captured this image while the nebula was still being formed. MOTHRA will, once complete, analyze the faint glow of gas across vast areas of the sky using 1,140 high-quality telephoto lenses and filters. The image, taken in November 2025, combines MOTHRA data (in black) with previous observations from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Kitt Peak 4-meter telescope (in color).
The MOTHRA data discovered 22 complete or partial arc-shaped glowing shock waves on the nebula’s eastern side, dubbed bow shocks due to their resemblance to water ripples. These waves form where clumps of stellar debris rapidly collide with the thin interstellar gas. By examining the image, astronomers traced the star’s debris as it is pulled apart, broken up, and eventually integrated into the surrounding space.
Yale University astronomer Pieter van Dokkum, who led the study, emphasized that the image reveals the handoff of recognizable stellar debris to the diffuse gas between stars. This process, previously difficult to observe, shows material from the dying star being stripped, fragmented, and gradually mixed into the interstellar medium.
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