The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning new image of the Helix Nebula, offering our closest view yet of this iconic planetary nebula located 655 light-years away in the constellation Aquarius. Webb's NIRCam instrument reveals intricate cometary knots—pillars of gas and dust sculpted by stellar winds—that were only hinted at in previous observations.

These structures show the violent death of a star, where blistering hot gas collides with cooler shells shed earlier in its life. The image's colors map temperature and chemistry, from hot blue regions to the cooler, reddish-orange edges where dust forms. This raw material could someday seed new stars and planetary systems.

The new data provides a sharper look at the nebula's complex physics, building on decades of study from ground-based telescopes and Hubble. Scientists will analyze these cometary knots to better understand how dying stars enrich the galaxy with the elements needed for planet formation.