Webb telescope images an aging binary star system in the center of a four-layered cosmic dust shell

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope revealed that the Apep star system, located 8,000 light-years away, contains four shells of carbon dust instead of the previously observed single shell. The system features two rare Wolf-Rayet stars that orbit each other every 190 years, creating these dust shells through colliding stellar winds. A third massive supergiant star, 40-50 times larger than our sun, carved a funnel-shaped cavity through the shells, and the Wolf-Rayet stars will eventually explode as supernovas.