It was one of the first known images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope earlier this year: a stunning veil of gas and dust illuminated by a dying star at its heart. Now, analyzing data from the most powerful telescope in history, researchers have found evidence that at least two previously unknown stars are lurking in the stellar cemetery.

Located about 2,000 light-years from Earth in the Milky Way, the Southern Ring Nebula was previously thought to contain two stars. One, located at the center of the nebula, is a white dwarf star, in its death throes, spewing streams of gas and dust that have formed the surrounding cloud for thousands of years.

Stripped of its brightness, the extremely hot white dwarf is the less obvious of the two stars seen in Webb images released in July. The white dwarf has given astronomers an insight into how our own Sun might die one day – billions of years from now. Unlike our lone Sun, it has a companion that is brighter than the two stars in Webb’s images.

Philippe Amram, an astrophysicist at France’s Marseille Astrophysics Laboratory, told AFP that this binary system prevalent in the Milky Way could not explain the “unusual” structure of the nebula. gas and dust that make up the surrounding cloud.

Amram is one of the co-authors of the study published in the journal Nature. Nature Astronomy On Thursday, he used Webb’s observations to reveal more of the nebula’s mysteries. Amram said that since the nebula was discovered by British astronomer John Herschel in 1835, astronomers have wondered why it has “such a strange shape, not exactly spherical.”

After analyzing data from Webb’s infrared cameras, the researchers said they found evidence of at least two other stars 1,500 times the diameter of the Sun-Pluto within the nebula. While the new pair is slightly further away from the white dwarf and its companion, all four stars—possibly five—are located at the center of the nebula. They’re close enough to interact with each other, and the “energy exchange” creates a peculiar shape of the nebula, Amram said. The Webb telescope, which has been in operation since July, has collected an unprecedented amount of data, and scientists hope this will herald a new era of discovery.