Each of the 17 dust rings was created when the two stars came close together and the streams of gas they blow into space collided, compressing the gas and forming dust.
The UK Astronomy Technology Centre helped design and build MIRI's spectrometer, which have been used to reveal the composition of the dust, formed mostly from the material ejected by the special type of star known as a Wolf-Rayet star.
The Wolf-Rayet star in this pair may have shed more than half its original mass via this process, experts suggest. They said the unique ring pattern forms because the star's orbit in WR 140 is elongated rather than circular.
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