Glittering Glimpse of Star Birth From NASA’s Webb Telescope
It is a sparkling scene of star birth captured by the James Webb space telescope of NASA. What seems to be a star of the star and steep mountain burst by vaporous clouds is actually a cosmic dust score plagued by blistering winds and the radiation of young stars nearby and massive.
Called Pismis 24, this young cluster of stars lies in the heart of the lobster nebula nearby, around 5,500 light years of the earth in the Constellation Scorpius. Housing a dynamic stellar nursery and one of the sites closest to the massive star birth, PISMIS 24 provides rare information on the large and massive stars. Its proximity makes this region one of the best places to explore the properties of young hot stars and how they evolve.
At the heart of this sparkling cluster is the brilliant Potis 24-1. It is in the center of a tuft of stars above the shredded orange peaks, and the highest arrow points directly to it. Pismis 24-1 appears as a gigantic unique star, and it was once considered the best known star. Scientists have since learned that it is made up of at least two stars, although they cannot be resolved in this image. At 74 and 66 solar masses, respectively, the two known stars are still among the most massive and brightest stars ever seen.
Captured in the infrared light by the webb Nircam (near infrared camera), this image reveals thousands of stars of the jewelry type sizes and variable colors. The biggest and the brightest with the six -point diffraction tips are the most massive stars of the cluster. Hundreds to thousands of smaller members of the cluster appear to be white, yellow and red, according to their stellar type and the amount of dust by consecrating them. Webb also shows us tens of thousands of stars behind the cluster that are part of the Milky Way Galaxy.
Super hot infant stars – some almost 8 times the temperature of the sun – explode the burning radiation and punish the winds that sculpt a cavity in the wall of the stars formation nebula. This nebula extends far beyond Nircam’s field of vision. Only small portions are visible at the bottom and at the top right of the image. Banners of hot and ionized gas flow from the ridges of the nebula, and vaporous sails of gas and dust, illuminated by the light of the stars, float around its imposing peaks.
The dramatic arrows have moved away from the brilliant wall of gas, residing with incessant radiation and winds. They are like fingers pointing to young hot stars that have sculpted them. The ferocious forces shaping and compressing these arrows cause the formation of new stars. The highest arrow extends over approximately 5.4 light years from its point at the bottom of the image. More than 200 of our solar systems on Neptune orbit could integrate into the width of its tip, which is 0.14 Lightyears.
In this image, the cyan color indicates hot or ionized gas hydrogen heated by young massive stars. Dust molecules similar to smoke here on earth are represented in orange. Red means cooler and denser molecular hydrogen. The darker the red, the more dense the gas. Black designates the densest gas, which did not emit light. Vaporous white characteristics are dust and gas that diffuse starry light.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
Video: NASA, ESA, CSA, STSCI, Alyssa Pagan (STSCI); Narration: Frank Summers (STSCI); Scriptwriter: Frank Summers (STSCI); Music: Christian Nieves (STSCI); Audio: Danielle Kirshenblat (STSCI); Producer: Greg Bacon (STSCI); Thanks: Vista, Akira Fujii, DSS
The James Webb space telescope is the world’s leading world science observatory. Webb solves mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond the distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
To find out more on webb, visit:
https://science.nasa.gov/webb
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Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov
Goddard Space Flight Center of NASA, Greenbelt, MD.
Ann Jenkins – jenkins@scsci.edu
Science Institute of the Space Telescope, Baltimore, MD.
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