Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2025

JULY-AUGUST 2025 by NASA/ESA/CSA Claire Blome & Christine Pulliam The most detailed image of planetary nebula NGC 1514 G as and dust ejected by a dying star at the heart of NGC 1514 came into com- plete focus thanks to mid-infrared data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Its rings, which are only detected in infrared light, now look like “fuzzy” clumps arranged in tangled patterns, and a network of clearer holes close to the central stars shows where faster material punched through. “Before Webb, we weren’t able to detect most of A bove: Two infrared views of NGC 1514. At left is an observation from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). At right is a more refined image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Webb shows its rings as intricate clumps of dust. It’s also easier to see holes punched through the bright pink cen- tral region. [NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, Caltech, UCLA, Michael Ressler (NASA-JPL), Dave Jones (IAC)] this material, let alone observe it so clearly,” said Mike Ressler, a re- searcher and project scientist for Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instru- ment) at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab- oratory in southern California. He discovered the rings around NGC 1514 in 2010 when he examined the image (at left) from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE). “With MIRI’s data, we can now comprehensively examine the