Tiny Dust Grains From Massive Stars: How the Smallest and Largest Are Linked

This artist's illustration shows the colliding stellar winds in WR 112, a binary star containing a Wolf-Rayet star and an OB-type star. The colliding winds created copious amounts of dust, which eventually finds its way into the interstellar medium, where it's taken up in the next round of star and planet formation. Surprisingly, the dust has two separate populations of dust grains with different sizes. Image Credit: NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/M. Weiss

Star dust is at the root of everything that exists, and is produced in large quantities around Wolf-Rayet binaries. But there are some puzzling observations of dust grain sizes that require explanations. New research shows why different observations have found different dust grain sizes.

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