In this mosaic image spanning 340 light years, Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam)… [+] shows the star-forming region of the Tarantula Nebula in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously surrounded by cosmic dust. The most active region appears to glow with massive, pale blue young stars. Among them are stars still embedded, appearing red, yet to emerge from the nebula’s dusty cocoon. NIRCam is able to detect these dust-shrouded stars thanks to its unprecedented resolution at near-infrared wavelengths. At the upper left of the cluster of young stars and at the top of the nebula cavity, an older star prominently displays the eight distinctive NIRCam diffraction peaks, an artifact of the telescope’s structure. Following the upper central point of this star upwards, it almost points to a distinctive bubble in the cloud. Young stars still surrounded by dusty material are blowing away this bubble, beginning to carve out their own cavity. Astronomers used two of Webb’s spectrographs to dig deeper into this region and determine the chemical composition of the star and the surrounding gas. This spectral information will tell astronomers the age of the nebula and how many generations of star birth it has seen. Farther away from the central region of hot young stars, the cooler gas takes on an oxide color, telling astronomers that the nebula is rich in complex hydrocarbons. This dense gas is the material that will form future stars. As the winds of massive stars sweep away the gas and dust, some of it will pile up and, with the help of gravity, form new stars.
NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI
Thousands of young stars have been revealed for the first time by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and in ultra-high resolution.
30 Doradus, also called the Tarantula Nebula, is one of the most studied regions of the night sky. It is about 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy orbiting the Milky Way.
The Tarantula Nebula’s fame comes from its status as the largest and brightest star-forming region known to astronomers in any of the galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood. More than 800,000 stars and protostars are found within the nebula.
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It gets its name from the filaments that resemble a spider web. Webb’s new images reveal the detailed structure and composition of its gas and dust. They also show distant background galaxies, as well as the hottest and most massive stars known.
Three images were created. The most detailed image (above) comes from JWST’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). This 14,557 x 8,418 pixel, 122 megapixel image is free to download in full resolution. It reveals stars previously shrouded in cosmic dust that JWST can now look directly at thanks to NIRCam’s high resolution at near-infrared wavelengths. You can see an active region of massive young blue stars.
In the longer wavelengths of light captured by its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), Webb focuses on … [+] the area surrounding the central star cluster and reveals a very different view of the Tarantula Nebula. In this light, the cluster’s hot young stars fade into the glow, and bright gas and dust appear. Abundant hydrocarbons illuminate the surfaces of dust clouds, shown in blue and violet. Much of the nebula takes on a more ghostly, diffuse appearance because mid-infrared light is able to show more of what’s going on beyond the clouds. Still-embedded protostars appear inside their dusty cocoons, including a bright cluster at the top edge of the image, left of center. Other areas appear dark, such as in the lower right corner of the image. This indicates the densest dust regions of the nebula, which even mid-infrared wavelengths cannot penetrate. These could be the sites of future or current star formation. MIRI was contributed by ESA and NASA, with the instrument designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in collaboration with JPL and the University of Arizona.
NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI
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This image, above, is from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which captures in longer infrared wavelengths. Cooler gas and embedded dust and protostars shine in it.
The Tarantula Nebula has a type of chemical composition similar to that of the huge star-forming regions seen at the “cosmic noon” of the universe when the cosmos was only a few billion years old and star formation ·lar reached the maximum.
Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) reveals what’s really going on in an intriguing region… [+] of the Tarantula Nebula. Astronomers focused the powerful instrument on what appeared to be a small bubble feature in Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) image. However, the spectra reveal a very different picture of a young star blowing a bubble in its surrounding gas. The signature of atomic hydrogen, shown in blue, appears in the star itself but does not immediately surround it. Instead, it appears outside the “bubble”, which the spectra show is actually “filled” with molecular hydrogen (green) and complex hydrocarbons (red). This indicates that the bubble is actually the top of a dense pillar of dust and gas that is being ejected by radiation from the cluster of massive young stars in the lower right (see full NIRCam image). It doesn’t look like a pillar like some other structures in the nebula because there isn’t much color contrast with the surrounding area. The strong stellar wind from the nebula’s massive young stars is tearing molecules out of the pillar, but inside they are preserved, forming a snug cocoon for the star. This star is still too young to clear its environment by bubbling up: NIRSpec captured it just beginning to emerge from the protective cloud from which it formed. Without Webb’s resolution at infrared wavelengths, the discovery of this star birth in action would not have been possible. NIRSpec was built for the European Space Agency (ESA) by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defense and Space (ADS) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center providing its detector and micro-shutter subsystems.
NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI
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Finally, they come with images from JWST’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec), which took spectra (light fingerprints) of a tiny bubble inside the Tarantula Nebula. Atomic hydrogen is blue, green indicates molecular hydrogen, and red is complex hydrocarbons (red). It indicates that the bubble is above a dense pillar of dust and gas caused by the star cluster radiation seen in the main image of this article.
I wish you clear skies and wide eyes.