Overview
- Mid-infrared imaging reveals four concentric, carbon-rich dust shells around Apep’s two Wolf–Rayet stars, where ground-based telescopes had seen only one.
- Analysis combining Webb data with multi-year VLT measurements constrains the binary’s orbital period to about 190–193 years.
- The stars spend roughly 25 years in a close pass each orbit, when colliding winds produce the repeating dust shells.
- A gravitationally bound supergiant estimated at 40–50 solar masses plows a wedge-shaped cavity through every expanding shell.
- The shells formed over the past ~700 years and extend nearly two light-years, but the system’s exact distance remains uncertain and will require further observations.