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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has come up with an interesting finding. It has revealed that a box-shaped cloud of opaque dust, which lies at the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy, is not just made up of gas, a study on Monday (Dec 4) said. The cloud- nicknamed 'the Brick' is also littered with frozen carbon monoxide, the study published in the Astrophysics Journal said on Monday (Dec 4).

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"We catalogue 56,146 stars detected in all six filters using the crowdsource package. Stars within and behind The Brick exhibit prodigious absorption in the F466N filter that is produced by a combination of CO ice and gas," the study said.

"In support of this conclusion, and as a general resource, we present models of CO gas and ice and CO2 ice in the F466N, F470N, and F410M filters. Both CO gas and ice contribute to the observed stellar colours," it added. 

According to a report by CNN, the study's findings could have drastic implications on how scientists analyse the region in future. The report said that more carbon dioxide inside the Brick could dramatically change how researchers study and measure dark clouds in the centre of the Milky Way Galaxy. 

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Adam Ginsburg, an astronomer at the University of Florida, said that people are now close to understanding what is happening inside the brick and where the mass is.

Ginsburg and his fellow researchers gained access to the JWST data in September last year. Being the most powerful space telescope ever built, JWST could offer never-before-seen insights into the Brick.

However, Ginsburg and his team found that the data needed a lot of work, CNN reported.

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The researchers spent months cleaning up the data, orienting it to line up correctly with the existing maps of the sky. As they peered at the Brick, they found the images from the space telescope were turning out the wrong colour.

“All the stars were coming out a bit too blue,” Ginsburg told the network. This prompted researchers to wonder if there was something wrong with the data. 

However, the University of Florida astronomer said, the problem was with their assumptions. The study said researchers had not expected there to be so much carbon monoxide ice, which caused the colour change.