Rice University astronomer Megan Reiter and her colleagues dove deep into one of the first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope and were rewarded with the discovery of telltale signs of two dozen young stars unseen around 7,500 light-years from Earth.
Research published in the December issue of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society offers a glimpse of what astronomers will find with Webb’s near-infrared camera. The instrument is designed to peer through clouds of interstellar dust that previously blocked astronomers’ view of stellar nurseries, especially those that produce stars similar to Earth’s sun.
Reiter, assistant professor of physics and astronomy, and co-authors from the California Institute of Technology, the University of Arizona, Queen Mary University in London, and the UK Royal Observatory in Edinburgh , Scotland, analyzed some of Webb’s earliest images of the Cosmic Cliffs, a star-forming region in a star cluster known as NGC 3324.
“What Webb gives us is a snapshot in time to see just how much star formation is taking place in what might be a more typical corner of the universe that we haven’t been able to see before,” said Reiter, who led the study. .
Located in the southern constellation of Carina, NGC 3324 is home to several well-known regions of star formation that astronomers have studied for decades. Many details of the area have been obscured by dust in images from the Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. Webb’s infrared camera was designed to see through the dust in these regions and to detect jets of gas and dust shooting out from the poles of very young stars.
Reiter and his colleagues focused their attention on a part of NGC 3324 where only a few young stars had previously been found. By analyzing a specific infrared wavelength, 4.7 microns, they discovered two dozen previously unknown molecular hydrogen outflows from young stars. The outflows vary in size, but many appear to originate from protostars that will eventually grow into low-mass stars like Earth’s sun.
“The results are a testament to both the quality of the telescope and what’s happening even in the quieter corners of the universe,” Reiter said.
During their first 10,000 years, infant stars gather material from the gas and dust around them. Most young stars eject a fraction of this material into space via jets flowing in opposite directions from their poles. Dust and gas accumulate in front of the jets, which weave their way through nebulous clouds like snowplows. A vital ingredient for star babies, molecular hydrogen, is swept up by these jets and is visible in Webb’s infrared images.
“Jets like these are signposts to the most exciting part of the star-forming process,” said study co-author Nathan Smith of the University of Arizona. “We only see them for a brief window of time when the protostar is actively accreting. »
The accretionary period of early star formation has been particularly difficult for astronomers to study because it is fleeting – typically a few thousand years in the early part of a star’s multimillion-year childhood.
Study co-author Jon Morse of the California Institute of Technology said jets like the ones discovered in the study “are only visible when you go into that deep dive – dissecting the data from each of the different filters and analyzing each area alone.
“It’s like finding buried treasure,” Morse said.
Reiter said the size of the Webb telescope also played a role in the discovery.
“It’s just a huge bucket of light,” Reiter said. “It allows us to see smaller things that we might have missed with a smaller telescope. And it also gives us a very good angular resolution. We thus obtain a level of sharpness that allows us to see relatively small elements, even in distant regions. »
The Webb Space Telescope program is led by NASA in partnership with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA). The science and mission operations of the telescope are led by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore.
The research was supported by NASA (NAS 5-0312, NAS 5-26555), STScI and a Dorothy Hodgkin Fellowship from the UK’s Royal Society.
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Materials provided by rice university. Original written by Jade Boyd. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.
