James Webb telescope celebrates first year of science up close at birth of Sun-like stars | Science

Space telescope James Webb Science celebrated its first year today with a stunning new image: a close-up of the birth of stars like the Sun. To celebrate this “successful first year”. webNASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) have released an image of a small star-forming region in the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex.

A new film web Today’s release shows the star-forming region closest to us. Its proximity of 390 light-years allows for a more extensive foreground, with no foreground stars in the intervening space. ESA reports in a note.

The picture web It shows a region of about 50 young stars, all of which are Sun-like or smaller. The dark regions are dense, where dense dust forms protostars. Large dipole jets of molecular hydrogen, depicted in red, dominate the image, appearing horizontally in the upper third and vertically across the right side. These jets are when a star first bursts through its envelope of cosmic dust, shooting a pair of opposing jets into space as a newborn reaches out its arms to the world for the first time. In contrast, the S1 star has carved out a luminous dust cave in the lower half of the image. It is the only star larger than the Sun in this image.

“Image received by Ro Obiucci web This allows a very short period in the life cycle of stars to be seen with new clarity. Our own Sun experienced such a phase a long time ago, and now we have the technology to see the beginning of another star’s history,” said project scientist Klaus Pontoppitan. web at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland, prior to the telescope’s launch and through its first year of operations.

See also  Space Debris: NASA has confirmed that the object that broke the roof of the house came from space

Some of the stars in the image show telltale shadows that represent protoplanetary disks: possible future planetary systems being formed.

“In just one year, the James Webb Space Telescope has changed humanity’s view of the cosmos, peering into clouds of dust and seeing light from the far corners of the universe for the first time.” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement.. For Nelson, “Each new image is a new discovery, allowing scientists around the world to ask and answer questions they could never have dreamed of before.”

Today, Wednesday, marks one year since the American space agency NASA released the first images to the scientific community and the public. web, On July 12, 2022. On that occasion, and during the live broadcast, snapshots of the Carina Nebula and the Southern Ring were shown, in addition to Stephen’s Quintet, a group of five galaxies, four of which are interacting with each other. Also released were the first spectrographic data associated with the exoplanet WASP-96 b, located 1,150 light-years from Earth, and the galaxy cluster SMACS 0732 at an event attended by US President Joe Biden earlier in the day. 4.6 billion years ago.

He James Webb, Launched on December 25, 2021 and located at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers, it is not only the largest and most advanced telescope in space, but also opens a new era in astronomy, focusing on the study of the early universe, evolution. Existence and structure of galaxies, life cycle of stars and other worlds. A collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian (CSA) has made this telescope a reality.

See also  Scientists discover 'alien star' at center of Milky Way

The most relevant discovery of the NASA space telescope, in its first year of operation, are the “little red dots”, some enigmatic galaxies, which remind us that exploring the universe is discovering phenomena beyond current knowledge.

You can follow Meaning Inside Facebook, Twitter e InstagramPoint here to get Our weekly newsletter.

Read more

Local News