WR DustERS News and Updates
Nov 11, 2022. The WR DustERS JWST/MIRI image of WR 140 is on the November 2022 cover of Nature Astronomy! Special thanks to Robert Hurt from Caltech/IPAC for his work on the processing the image in the cover (as well as the image in our banner).
**Oct 12, 2022**. We have published initial results from our MIRI Imager and MRS observations of WR140 in Nature Astronomy. The MIRI observations reveal the presence of more than 17 circumstellar dust shells around WR140 formed by the binary system over the past ~130 years, and the spectroscopic signatures of the circumstellar dust is consistent with "Unidentified Infrared Band" features. Our results indicate that dust-forming carbon-rich WR binaries like WR140 are enriching the interstellar medium with carbon-rich aromatic compounds and carbonaceous dust.
On the same day, results from high-resolution ground-based infrared imaging were published in Nature by WR DustERS science collaborator Yinuo Han. Geometric models of WR140's dust emission from Han et al. (2022) were used to interpret the >17 circumstellar dust shells revealed by JWST.
