Commemorating Webb Telescope Launch, NASA Shares Image of Stellar Formation

NASA celebrated a year of exploration by the James Webb Space Telescope on Wednesday, unveiling a stunning image showcasing the birth of Sun-like stars through jets of red gas and a luminous dust-filled cave in the cosmos.

The picture shows the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest observatory to Earth, whose proximity of 390 light years allows a sharp close-up of the most powerful orbital observatory ever.

“In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has changed humanity’s view of the cosmos by peering into clouds of dust and seeing light from the far corners of the universe for the first time,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

“Each new image is a new discovery that allows scientists around the world to ask and answer questions they never dreamed of.”

Webb’s image shows about 50 young stars with masses equal to or smaller than our Sun.

Some have characteristic shadows around the stars – a sign that planets may eventually form around them.

Huge jets of hydrogen can be seen horizontally in the upper third of the image and vertically on the right.

“These occur when a star first bursts through the cosmic dust curtain of its birth, shooting a pair of opposing jets into space like a newborn reaching out its arms to the world,” the US space agency said in a statement.

“At the bottom of the image, you can see a young star that is energetic enough to blow a bubble into the cloud of dust and gas from which it was born,” said Christine Chen, an astronomer at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which operates. Webb, told AFP.

It does so through a combination of its light and the associated stellar wind, he added.

Interstellar space is full of gas and dust, which in turn serves as the raw material for new stars and planets.

“Webb’s image of Rho Ophiuchus allows us to see a very short period in a star’s life cycle with new clarity. Our own Sun experienced a phase like this a long time ago, and now we have the technology to see the beginning of another star’s story,” said Webb project scientist Klaus Pontoppidan.

– A new era of astronomy –

Webb launched in December 2021 from French Guiana on a 1.5 million kilometer (nearly one million mile) journey to an area called the second Lagrange point.

President Joe Biden unveiled its first color image on July 11, 2022: the clearest view yet of the early universe, stretching back 13 billion years.

The next wave included the “mountains” and “valleys” of the star-forming region called the Cosmic Rocks in the Carina Nebula; and a group of five galaxies bound in a celestial dance called Stephan’s Quintet.

Webb has a primary mirror over 6.5 meters long, made up of 18 hexagonal gold-coated segments, and a five-layer solar shield the size of a tennis court.

Unlike its predecessor, Hubble, it operates primarily in the infrared spectrum, allowing it to look back closer to the beginning of time and better penetrate the clouds of dust where stars and planetary systems form today.

Among the most important discoveries are some of the earliest galaxies formed a few hundred million years after the Big Bang, which identify with unprecedented precision the atmospheric compositions of planets outside our solar system, and a wonderful new view of the planet Jupiter in our own forest. .

Webb has enough fuel for a 20-year mission, promising a new era in astronomy.

It will soon be joined in orbit by Europe’s Euclid Space Telescope, launched on July 1 to shed light on two of the universe’s greatest mysteries: dark energy and dark matter.