Apep: Chaos Carved in Carbon Dust

Named for the Egyptian god of chaos, Apep is a system unlike any other known in our galaxy: two Wolf-Rayet stars, a rare class of massive, evolved stars, locked in orbit together. Webb's mid-infrared image is the first to reveal four coiled shells of dust expanding outward in the same repeating pattern, where earlier observations could detect only one.

The shells were cast off over the last 700 years. The two stars swing past one another roughly every 190 years, and during each 25-year close pass they generate dense carbon dust, hurled into space at 2,000 to 3,000 kilometers per second. Because carbon grains stay warm far from their stars, only Webb's mid-infrared instrument could pick out the faint outer spirals.

Webb also confirmed a third member of the system: a massive supergiant on a wider orbit that slices through the expanding dust, cutting a funnel-shaped cavity into each shell. All three stars appear as a single point of light at the center of the spiral.