The James Webb Space Telescope peeked inside a molecular cloud 630 light-years from Earth and spotted ice made up of different elements.
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Molecular clouds are interstellar gatherings of gas and dust in which molecules of hydrogen and carbon monoxide can form. Dense clusters within these clouds can collapse to form young stars called protostars.
The Webb telescope focused on the dark molecular cloud Chamaeleon I, which appears blue in the new image. A young protostar, called Ced 110 IRS 4, glows orange on the left.
The prestigious journal Nature Astronomy published a study on Monday including the image.
Other orange dots representing starlight in the background break through the cloud.
Starlight has helped astronomers determine the diversity of frozen molecules within the dark molecular cloud Chamaeleon I, which forms dozens of young stars.
The Webb Telescope observes the universe through infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye. Infrared light can reveal previously hidden aspects of the cosmos and pierce dense clumps of gas and dust that would otherwise obscure view.
“Our results provide insight into the initial, dark chemistry stage of ice formation on interstellar dust grains that will become centimeter-sized pebbles from which planets form,” said a statement. lead author of the study, Melissa McClure, an astronomer and assistant professor at the Leiden Observatory, in the Netherlands.
‘These observations open a new window into the pathways of formation of the simple and complex molecules that are needed to make the building blocks of life,’ she adds.
In addition to simple molecules, researchers have seen evidence of more complex molecules.
“Our identification of complex organic molecules, such as methanol and potentially ethanol, also suggests that the many star and planetary systems developing in this particular cloud will inherit molecules in a fairly advanced chemical state,” the agency said in a statement. study co-author Will Rocha, an astronomer and postdoctoral researcher at Leiden Observatory.
“This could mean that the presence of precursors of prebiotic molecules in planetary systems is a common result of star formation, rather than a unique feature of our own solar system,” he added.
Astronomers used starlight filtering through the cloud to search for chemical fingerprints and identify the elements.
“We simply could not have observed these ice sheets without Webb,” study co-author Klaus Pontoppidan, a Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, said in a statement.