The Webb telescope found something exceedingly rare around a dying star

The Ring Nebula is a well-known space icon shaped like a doughnut about 2,500 light-years away in the constellation Lyra.

But astronomers think it's been holding a secret that only the penetrating gaze of the James Webb Space Telescope , a joint project of NASA and the European and Canadian space agencies, could reveal. Using Webb's infrared-sensing MIRI instrument, scientists got a clear sightline to the small but scorching star at its center.

The shriveled core — a white dwarf — is all that remains of the star on its deathbed, having molted its outermost layers. When researchers zoomed in, they got a surprise. Surrounding the withering star was a disk of dust, much like the kind found around new stars that are in their prime planet-birthing years. It was kind of