
NASA's Galaxy Evolution Explorer captured this ultraviolet image of the star CW Leonis and the remarkable shell of sooty, dusty gas that surrounds it. CW Leonis is a carbon star — a supergiant star with a carbon-rich atmosphere — and its spectrum reveals that the star's surroundings are home to dozens of molecules. Its spectrum also contains many lines of unknown origin, suggesting that even more molecules await discovery. To learn how researchers synthesized molecules in a lab to study the atmosphere of this distant star, you can read our AAS Nova highlight and the associated research article in the Astrophysical Journal Letters. [NASA/JPL-Caltech]
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