The “James Webb” telescope provides completely new insights into space. Images of the Tarantula Nebula dwarf anything previously known with their level of detail. The pictures also clear up a misconception.
The first images from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) have amazed astronomers and star enthusiasts alike. The latest coup is an image of the so-called Tarantula Nebula with pin-sharp detail that NASA released on Tuesday.
Officially dubbed 30 Doradus, the region of space is a stellar nursery and has long been a popular destination for astronomers interested in star formation. The region owes its name to the Tarantula Nebula because of its visual resemblance to a hairy tarantula.
Thanks to the James Webb telescope’s high-resolution infrared instruments, thousands of young stars, distant background galaxies and the detailed makeup of the nebula’s gas and dust structures have been made visible for the first time. Previously unseen features are helping to deepen scientific understanding of the largest and brightest star-forming region, closest to our galaxy at a distance of 161,000 light-years.
The Webb telescope works primarily in the infrared spectrum, since the light from objects in the distant cosmos has been stretched into this wavelength as the universe has expanded. The near-infrared camera (NIRCam), found that the cavity at the center of the nebula has been eroded by radiation carried by stellar winds. This radiation emanates from a cluster of massive young stars that appear as faint blue dots. As the near-infrared spectrograph (NIRSpec) analyzed light patterns to determine the composition of objects, a young star was “caught” emerging from its dusty cocoon and in turn forming the nebula. Previously, it was assumed that the same star was at a later stage in its formation.
The region was also imaged with the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which uses longer wavelengths of infrared to penetrate dust grains that absorb or scatter shorter wavelengths. This blocked out the hot stars and brightened the cooler regions. Never-before-seen points of light were revealed within the stellar nursery, indicating protostars still gaining mass.
The Tarantula Nebula is of particular interest to astronomers because its chemical composition is similar to that of the early star-forming regions of our galaxy. This makes the Tarantula Nebula the closest example of what was happening in the Universe when it was in its most active phase of star formation.
So far, mankind still knows little about the process of star formation, although they have been observing the stars for thousands of years. The European Space Agency ESA explains this by saying that “we weren’t previously able to get sharp pictures of what’s happening behind the thick clouds of the star-forming regions”. However, the JWST has now begun “to reveal a never-before-seen universe” and is “just beginning to rewrite the history of star formation”.