Astronomers have used the James Webb Space Telescope to identify a supermassive star left behind after two stars collided and produced a luminous red nova, offering fresh insight into stellar evolution.
The Webb’s powerful infrared capabilities revealed that the resulting object, born from the merger events like AT 2011kp and AT 1997bs, remains surrounded by dense dust that had previously hidden its features.
Researchers also discovered that this dust is rich in carbon compounds, which play a key role in cosmic chemical enrichment and could be linked to processes vital for life’s building blocks.