NASA’s Webb telescope captures cosmic tarantula 161,000 light-years away
Cosmic tarantula captured by Webb telescope
The Tarantula Nebula is rapidly creating new stars, unlike the Milky Way. Even though it is close to us, it resembles the enormous star-forming areas from the early cosmos, when star formation was at its pinnacle and the universe was said to be at "cosmic noon."
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope discovered thousands of incredibly young stars in a stellar nursery known as 30 Doradus. The Tarantula Nebula has long been a favourite of astronomers researching star formation because of the appearance of its dusty filaments in earlier telescope photos.
The Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group, the galaxies closest to our Milky Way, and is located in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, barely 161,000 light-years distant. The brightest and biggest stars in the world call it home.
Three of Webb's high-resolution infrared instruments were directed at the tarantula by astronomers. The area appears to be the interior of a silk-lined burrowing tarantula's home when viewed with Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). A cluster of massive young stars that glow pale blue in the image has hollowed out the nebula's cavity in the centre of the NIRCam image.
Only the densest regions of the nebula's surroundings withstand erosion by the strong stellar winds of these stars, generating pillars that seem to point back toward the cluster. These pillars hold protostars that are in the process of formation; soon, they will emerge from their dusty cocoons and take turns sculpting the nebula.
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One very young star was observed by Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) doing just that. Previously, astronomers hypothesised that this star might be a little older and now clearing out a bubble around itself.
NIRSpec revealed that the star was still surrounded by an insulating cloud of dust and that it was only just starting to escape from its pillar. This episode of star formation-in-action would not have been discovered without Webb's high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths.
(with inputs from agencies)