The powerful vision in the infrared spectrum of the james webb space telescope has discovered thousands of stars in formation in the Tarantula Nebula that had previously gone undetected.
Inside of Large Magellanic Clouds, only 161,000 light years away, the tarantula nebula it is the largest and brightest star-forming region of the Local Group, the closest galaxies to the Milky Way, making it one of the favorites of astronomers to observe that process.
The James Webb, launched on December 25, pointed its instruments at this nebula, also called 30 Doraduswhere in addition to the young stars it revealed the existence of distant background galaxies, as well as the detailed structure and composition of the gas and dust of the nebula.
The image of the nebula taken by the near infrared camera (NIRCam) is reminiscent of the home of a burrowing tarantula, lined with its silk, as described by the European Space Agency (ESA), which participates with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency in The telescope.
The cavity of the nebula, which can be seen in the center of the image, is due to scorching radiation from a cluster of massive young stars, which glow pale blue in the image.
The denser surrounding areas of the nebula are the only ones that resist erosion by the powerful stellar winds of young stars, forming pillars containing forming protostars, which will eventually break out of their dusty envelope to form the nebula.
The Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) For its part, it captured a star that is beginning to emerge from its pillar and that still had an insulating cloud of dust around it.
Without Webb’s high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths, this star-forming episode in action could not have been revealed, ESA said.
EFE