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A groundbreaking finding has been revealed by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, as it uncovered that what was believed to be a single star, known as WL 20S and studied since the 1970s by various observatories, is in fact a set of twin stars. This duo of stars, formed roughly between two to four million years ago, has astonished the scientific community.
Utilizing the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) on the James Webb Space Telescope, which provides unparalleled spatial and spectral resolution, researchers were able to identify that WL 20S was not a lone star but a binary system. The revelation was so surprising that astronomer Mary Barsony, the leading researcher on the project, expressed their astonishment at the discovery, emphasizing the crucial role of MIRI in identifying the twin stars and the gas jets they emit from their poles.
This pair of stars, part of the WL 20 grouping, also exhibits jets of gas shooting out from their poles, a detail unveiled by the high-resolution imaging from the Webb Telescope. Further contributions from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile showed that these stars are surrounded by disks of dust and gas, suggesting the exciting possibility that planets might be forming within these disks.
The findings, which underscore the powerful combination of the Webb Telescope and ALMA in expanding our understanding of star formation, were shared at the 244th meeting of the American Astronomical Society on June 12 as per NASA’s announcement. This discovery not only sheds new light on the twin stars but also hints at the critical stages of their development and the ongoing process of planet formation in their surrounding disks.