2023-12-05 02:00:42
The center of the Milky Way galaxy is home to several unusual celestial objects, including supermassive black holes, clouds of hot gas, and giant stars that are helpful in understanding the origin of most of the universe. Scientists in this confusing area observed different wavelengths using the James Webb Space Telescope. New features have been revealed from sparkling images showing a corner of the galaxy’s core in unprecedented detail. The James Webb Space Telescope’s latest image captures the dense central compartment of the Milky Way galaxy, including Sagittarius C, a star-forming region located 300 light-years in front of the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. The distance between the Milky Way galaxy center and Earth is about 25,000 light years, which is close enough to observe star formation in difficult environments. The research team revealed that there were many features seen for the first time because there was no level of resolution and sensitivity that could be obtained from infrared data in this area until now. An estimated 500,000 stars exist in an area 50 light-years wide. Among them, there is a cluster of baby stars, or protostars, creating a stream of gas that shines like a flame in the dark clouds. In the middle of this cluster is a huge protostar with a mass 30 times that of the sun. Protostars are born in clouds and join the stars that grow around them. These large clouds in which protostars are forming are dense and block out light from stars behind them. For this reason, it appears to be less dense than it actually is, but it is said to be the densest area within the image range. Small, dark clouds are also scattered like puffy holes in this state of chaos. The turquoise part in the image is a large-scale emission of ionized hydrogen surrounding a dark cloud, spanning 25 light-years. According to NASA, the ionized hydrogen may be caused by energetic photons emitted from young giant stars, but such a vast area is rare and needs to be investigated. The image also showed another strange feature: needle-like structures oriented in different directions among the ionized hydrogen. The center of the galaxy is a dense and disorderly place. Star-forming clouds of rough, magnetic gas form jets and radiation that affects the surrounding gas. The James Webb Space Telescope has given us more data about this difficult environment than ever before, but we have only just begun to investigate it. Related information can be found here.
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