A closer look at one of the first images produced by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has revealed a trove of young stars in a particularly exciting and mysterious stage of development.
NASA astronomers have embarked on a “deep dive” into an image of the Cosmic Cliffs, a “coastline” of gas and dust found in the Carina Nebula, one of the brightest and largest nebulae where stars are born. stars about 7,15 light years away from Earth.
Some of the protostars that are being born here will go on to form low-mass stars, just like our Sun.
An earlier version of this image was published in July, but researchers are now studying it using a specific wavelength of infrared light. To his delight, he has revealed the presence of dozens of previously unknown outflows sprouting from extremely young stars.
“What Webb gives us is a snapshot in time to see how much star formation it’s occurring in what may be a more typical corner of the universe that we haven’t been able to see before,” Megan Reiter, lead author of the study and a fellow at Rice University in Texas, said in a statement.
In this latest work, the “jets” were identified through the presence of molecular hydrogen, a vital ingredient for the formation of new stars. As stars are born, gathering material from the gas and dust around them, they eject some of the material in their polar regions in high-powered jets.
It is a violent and destructive process, which destroys anything that stands in its way.
Capturing this phenomenon is especially tempting, as it only lasts barely 500, years, which is a momentary blink when you consider the multi-billion dollar star formation process.
“Jet like these are indicators of the most exciting part of the star formation process. We only see them for a brief period when the protostar is actively accumulating,” explained co-author Nathan Smith of the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Much of the new knowledge was only revealed thanks to the cutting-edge technology aboard the JWST, the most powerful and expensive space telescope ever created.
Their High level of sensitivity and ability to see in the infrared allow the telescope to look deeper into celestial structures than before, allowing astronomers to learn more about things like the early stages of star generation.
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