The James Webb Space Telescope the team announced Thursday that scientists have discovered dozens of energetic jets and streams from young stars previously obscured by clouds of dust in one of the $10 billion observatory’s iconic first images.
In a statement, NASA said the “rare” finding, including a paper published this month in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, marks the beginning of a new era in how stars form and how radiation from nearby massive stars. can affect the development of planets.
Space Rocks of the Carina NebulaThe NGC 3324 star cluster is visible at a new wavelength with Webb, and the telescope’s capabilities allow researchers to track the motion of other features previously imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope.
Analyzing data from a certain wavelength of infrared light, astronomers discovered two dozen previously unknown outflows from extremely young stars detected by molecular hydrogen.
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This new image of the Cosmic Gaps from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) reveals dozens of previously hidden jets and streams from young stars. This image separates several wavelengths of light from the first image discovered on July 12, 2022, highlighting molecular hydrogen, a vital ingredient for star formation. The inscriptions on the right highlight three regions of Cosmic Rocks with particularly active molecular hydrogen fluxes. In this figure, red, green, and blue are assigned to Webb’s NIRCam data at 4.7, 4.44, and 1.87 microns (filters F470N, F444W, and F187N, respectively).
(Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale (STScI).)
Molecular hydrogen is an important component of star formation and is a good way to monitor the early stages of this process.
“As young stars collect material from the gas and dust surrounding them, most eject some of that material back out of their polar regions in the form of jets and streams. These jets then act like snowplows, bulldozing their environment. It appears that molecular hydrogen in Webb’s observations is the result of these jets.” is swept and excited by it,” NASA explained.
Objects were discovered: “tiny fountains” and “behemoths stretching light years from forming stars.”
Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) image of the Cosmic Rocks at the edge of the giant gaseous void within NGC 3324, with compass arrows, scale bar and color key for reference. The north and east compass arrows indicate the direction of the image in the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east in the sky (as seen from below) is reversed relative to the directional axes on the earth map (as seen from above). The scale bar is marked with light years, which is the distance light travels in one Earth year. Light takes 2 years to travel a distance equal to the length of the rod. One light year is about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers. This image shows wavelengths of invisible near-infrared light converted into visible light colors. The color button indicates which NIRCam filters were used during light collection. The color of each filter name is the visible light color used to represent the infrared light passing through that filter. Webb’s NIRCam was built by a team at the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center.
(Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
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Previous observations of jets and streams have mostly looked at nearby regions and more advanced objects already detected at Hubble’s wavelengths.
“Webb’s unparalleled sensitivity allows for observations of more distant regions, while its infrared optimization probes the young stages of dust sampling. Together, this provides astronomers with an unprecedented view of environments similar to the birthplace of our solar system,” the agency noted.
What looks like jagged mountains on a moonlit evening is actually the edge of the nearby young, star-forming region NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Taken in infrared light by the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals previously obscured regions of star birth.
(NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
Many of these proto-stars are destined to become low-mass stars like the Sun.
This is the period of star formationNASA added that it is particularly difficult to catch because it is relatively early.
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Webb’s observations also help astronomers shed light on how active star-forming regions are.
By comparing the state of previously known flows in this region with Hubble data from 16 years ago, scientists were able to track the speed and direction of the jets.
