Stunning new images captured by the James Webb Space Telescope show the Orion Nebula, a mass of gas and stellar dust that resembles a massive, winged object with a bright star in its center.
Our solar system 4.5 billion years ago
This nebula, located 1,350 light-years from Earth, appears to be in an environment similar to that in which our solar system was born 4.5 billion years ago.
So the international researchers who released the ground-breaking images intend to study this data in order to better understand the conditions that prevailed when our system came to be.
Capturing these images is part of one of James Webb’s major monitoring programmes, involving more than 100 scientists from 18 countries, as well as the French National Center for Scientific Research, Western University in Canada and the University of Michigan.
“We were amazed by the wonderful images of the Orion Nebula,” Els Peters, an astrophysicist at Western University, said in a statement. “The new images allow us to better understand how massive stars transform their clouds of gas and dust.”
Large amounts of dust obscure the nebulae, making it impossible for visible-light telescopes such as the Hubble Space Telescope to see what’s inside.
James Webb has tools that capture infrared light and allow him to monitor through these layers of dust, which makes it possible to detect huge space facilities with a size of about 40 astronomical units. The astronomical unit is roughly equivalent to the distance that separates the Earth from the sun.
Among these facilities are a number of dense galactic filaments that promote the birth of a new generation of stars as well as star systems in the process of formation consisting of a central star surrounded by a circle of dust and gas within which planets are formed.
“Hopefully, you’ll come to an understanding of the full cycle of star birth,” said astrophysicist Edwin Bergen of the University of Michigan.
James Webb, with a cost of ten billion dollars, is currently located about 1.5 million kilometers from the planet.