The Apep Wolf-Rayet Binary Star System | Webb Visualization | STScI
This scientific visualization models what three of the four dust shells sent out by two Wolf-Rayet stars in the Apep system look like in 3D based on mid-infrared observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Apep is made up of two Wolf-Rayet binary stars that are orbiting together with a third supergiant star. For 25 years during every 190-year orbit, the Wolf-Rayet stars’ winds collide, producing and sending out new waves of amorphous carbon dust. The width of the widest bubble is at least 4.6 light-years across.
Wolf-Rayet stars can be around 20 times as massive as our sun, but seem to be on a mission to shed surplus mass as quickly as possible—they blast substantial winds of particles out into space, causing them to dwindle at a rapid rate. A typical star of this type can lose a mass equal to that of our sun in just 100,000 years!
These massive stars are also incredibly hot, with surface temperatures some 10 to 40 times that of the sun, and very luminous, glowing at tens of thousands to several million times the brightness of the sun. Many of the brightest and most massive stars in the Milky Way are Wolf-Rayet stars.
Because these stars are so intense they do not last very long, burning up their fuel and blasting their bulk out into the cosmos on very short timescale—only a few hundred thousand years.
Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
Visualization: Christian Nieves (STScI)
Duration: 41 seconds
Release Date: Nov. 19, 2025
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