The James Webb Space Telescope on Tuesday unveiled stunning images of the Tarantula Nebula, a region of the cosmos where stars are being born at a breakneck pace. The pictures will allow to deepen the scientific knowledge on the stellar formation.
Nicknamed for the shape of its clouds of gas and dust, the Tarantula Nebula is located ‘just’ 161,000 light-years away, NASA wrote in a statement. It is the largest and brightest star-forming region of the entire group of galaxies near our own and is home to the hottest and most massive stars known.
Although this nebula has long been a prime target for scientists studying the process of star formation, these images are helping to reveal new details, including thousands of young stars previously invisible to the eyes of previous telescopes.
Interesting chemical composition
Several scientific instruments on board James Webb were used to capture images of the nebula, at different wavelengths. One of them made it possible to distinguish a star just emerging from its pillar of dust, while maintaining a cloud around it. Researchers previously thought that this star was actually older and more advanced.
“Star-forming regions within our Milky Way do not produce stars at the same breakneck rate as the Tarantula Nebula and have different chemical compositions,” NASA explained.
Its chemical composition is of great interest to researchers, as it is similar to regions where stars formed when the cosmos was only a few billion years old, when star formation was at its peak.
Launched into space last Christmas and fully operational for only a few months, the James Webb Telescope conducts its observations 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. According to the US space agency, this piece of engineering ‘just begins to rewrite the history of stellar creation.’
/ATS