Tag: Star formation

Stunning James Webb image shows the heart of our Milky Way | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

Stunning James Webb image shows the heart of our Milky Way | Digital Trends

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the heart of our galaxy, in a region close to the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way, Sagittarius A*. The image shows a star-forming region where filaments of dust and gas are clumping together to give birth to new baby stars.

The image was captured using Webb’s NIRCam instrument, a camera that looks in the near-infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum with shorter wavelengths shown in blue and cyan and longer wavelengths shown in yellow and red.

The full view of the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals a 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense center. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet-unidentified features. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, S. Crowe (UVA)

This region is called Sagittarius C, and is located around 300 light-years away from the supermassive black hole Sagittarius A*. For reference, Earth is located much further away from the galactic center, at a distance of around 26,000 light years from Sagittarius A*.

There are thought to be as many as 500,000 stars in the Sagittarius C region, including many young protostars, some of which will go on to become main-sequence stars like our sun. As stars form, they give off powerful stellar winds which blow away nearby material and prevent more stars from forming very close to them.

These outflows are illuminated in the infrared wavelength, and the cyan-colored patches in the image are created by ionized gas. The young stars give off a great deal of energy, which ionizes the hydrogen gas around them and makes them glow in the infrared.

However, there are actually even more stars in this area than can be seen in the image. The pockets of darkness scattered throughout the image aren’t blank but are dense clouds that are dark in the infrared, including a large dense area in the heart of the region.

There are still some surprises to be found in the image too, with some features that scientists need to study in more depth. “Researchers say they have only begun to dig into the wealth of unprecedented high-resolution data that Webb has provided on this region, and many features bear detailed study,” Webb scientists write. “This includes the rose-colored clouds on the right side of the image, which have never been seen in such detail.”

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James Webb captures a stellar nursery in nearby dwarf galaxy | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

James Webb captures a stellar nursery in nearby dwarf galaxy | Digital Trends

A gorgeous new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a stunning sight from one of our galactic neighbors. The image shows a region of star formation called NGC 346, where new stars are being born. It’s located in the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy that is a satellite galaxy to the Milky Way.

The star-forming region of the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC) was previously imaged by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2005, but this new image gives a different view as it is taken in the infrared wavelength by Webb instead of the optical light wavelength used by Hubble.

This new infrared image of NGC 346 taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) traces emissions from cool gas and dust. In this image, blue represents silicates and sooty chemical molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. More diffuse red emission shines from warm dust heated by the brightest and most massive stars in the heart of the region. Bright patches and filaments mark areas with abundant numbers of protostars. Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Nolan Habel (NASA-JPL); Image Processing: Patrick Kavanagh (Maynooth University)

This image was taken using the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), Webb’s instrument that operates in the mid-infrared range. Unlike the other three instruments, which operate in the near-infrared, MIRI is particularly suited to highlighting dust and the intricate structures that it forms. The colors here represent different processes, as red shows the warm dust that is heated by bright nearby stars, while the blue regions represent areas dominated by molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons.

You can see the contrast in how objects look at different wavelengths by comparing this image taken with MIRI to a previous James Webb image of the same region taken with its NIRCam instrument.

NGC 346, shown here in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a dynamic star cluster that lies within a nebula 200,000 light years away. Webb reveals the presence of many more building blocks than previously expected, not only for stars, but also planets, in the form of clouds packed with dust and hydrogen. 
NGC 346, shown here in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a dynamic star cluster that lies within a nebula 200,000 light-years away. SCIENCE: NASA, ESA, CSA, Olivia C. Jones (UK ATC), Guido De Marchi (ESTEC), Margaret Meixner (USRA) IMAGE PROCESSING: Alyssa Pagan (STScI), Nolan Habel (USRA), Laura Lenkić (USRA), Laurie E. U. Chu (NASA Ames)

This image focuses on the near-infrared, which is ideal for highlighting the presence of stars and the arcs of gas in the region, which is primarily hydrogen.

“By combining Webb data in both the near-infrared and mid-infrared, astronomers are able to take a fuller census of the stars and protostars within this dynamic region,” Webb scientists explain. “The results have implications for our understanding of galaxies that existed billions of years ago, during an era in the universe known as ‘cosmic noon,’ when star formation was at its peak and heavy element concentrations were lower, as seen in the SMC.”

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Zoom into detailed James Webb image of the Orion nebula | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

Zoom into detailed James Webb image of the Orion nebula | Digital Trends

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows the majesty of the gorgeous Orion nebula in tremendous detail. The European Space Agency (ESA) has shared an extremely high-resolution version of the image that you can zoom into to see the details of this stunning cloud of dust and gas which hosts sites of star formation where new stars are being born.

The full image is available to view in the ESASky application, where you can zoom in a compare images of the same target taken in different wavelengths. There’s also a very large version of the image if you want to download and pursue it at your leisure.

This image shows a short-wavelength NIRCam mosaic of the inner Orion Nebula and Trapezium Cluster. It shows a region 4 light-years across, slightly less than the distance between the Sun and our nearest neighbor, Proxima Centauri. The full image on ESASky measures 21,000 x 14,351 pixels. NASA, ESA, CSA; Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson

Also known as Messier 42, the Orion nebula is located just to the south of the Orion’s belt constellation and is one of the brightest nebulae in the sky, making it a key target for scientists studying star formation. As new stars are born, those which are young and very hot give off ultraviolet radiation which illuminates the clouds of dust and gas around them. At the heart of this nebula is a group of stars called the Trapezium Cluster, which are young and bright, some of which are up to 30 times the mass of our sun.

This image reveals some cosmic oddities as well. Scientists told the New York Times that the observations included 150 free-floating objects, some of which are in pairs. They are similar to rogue planets that don’t orbit a star, but it’s not clear how they formed within the nebula. “There’s something wrong with either our understanding of planet formation, star formation — or both,” ESA scientist Samuel Pearson told the Times, puzzling over the presence of these objects. “They shouldn’t exist.”

The unusual objects have been named Jupiter Mass Binary Objects, or JuMBOs, and can be smaller than Jupiter but reach temperatures of over 1,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The unexpected discovery suggests there may be aspects of planetary formation that we don’t yet understand.

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Spiral galaxy about to eat its dwarf galaxy neighbor | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

Spiral galaxy about to eat its dwarf galaxy neighbor | Digital Trends

A recent image from the Dark Energy Camera shows an act of galactic cannibalism, with a spiral galaxy similar to our Milky Way about to devour a nearby dwarf galaxy that has wandered into its path.

The dramatic interaction is occurring between a large spiral galaxy known as Haley’s Coronet and a smaller dwarf galaxy called NGC 1531. The dwarf galaxy is in the process of merging with the larger galaxy, which is being pulled into an irregular shape by the gravitational forces.

The spiral galaxy NGC 1532, also known as Haley’s Coronet, is caught in a lopsided tug-of-war with its smaller neighbor, the dwarf galaxy NGC 1531. The image — taken by the US Department of Energy’s (DOE) Dark Energy Camera — captures the mutual gravitational influences of a massive galaxy and dwarf galaxy merger. CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA; R. Colombari, M. Zamani & D. de Martin (NSF’s NOIRLab)

“This lopsided cosmic tug-of-war is a snapshot of how large galaxies grow and evolve by devouring smaller galaxies, absorbing their stars and star-forming material,” NOIRLab explains. “A similar process has happened in the Milky Way, possibly six times in the past, leaving vast streams of stars and other signs in the halo of the Milky Way.”

The two galaxies shown in the image will eventually merge into one, as the small dwarf galaxy is absorbed by the larger one. But before that happens, you can see how the larger galaxy’s spiral arms are being distorted by gravity, with one spiral arm twisted up toward the top of the image.

How to predict what will happen when two galaxies meet is a complex issue thought to relate to the galaxies’ supermassive black holes, but we do know that the outcome depends on the size of the galaxies involved. In cases like this, one large galaxy can easily absorb a smaller dwarf galaxy. However, when two similarly sized galaxies collide, they may merge to create an unusual structure, or the meeting may result in one of the galaxies being annihilated.

As dramatic as the process of galaxy merging is, however, it isn’t only destructive. Mergers also often trigger waves of star formation, with material like dust and gas forming bridges between the two galaxies and providing the basis for the birth of new stars.

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Star shredded its companion to create double-lobed nebula | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

Star shredded its companion to create double-lobed nebula | Digital Trends

Nebulae are some of the most beautiful structures to be found in space: vast clouds of dust and gas that are illuminated by light from nearby stars. These regions are often busy sites of star formation, as new stars are born from clumps of dust that collect more material due to gravity. Within the category of nebulae, there are different types such as emission nebulae, where the gases are ionized by radiation and glow brightly, or supernova remnants, which are the structures left behind after massive stars come to the end of their lives and explode.

A recent image captured by NOIRLab’s Gemini South telescope shows a rare type of nebula called a bipolar reflection nebula. Known as the Toby Jug Nebula for its similar shape to a traditional English jug, nebula IC 2220 is 1,200 light-years away in the constellation of Carina, or the Keel.

A billowing pair of nearly symmetrical loops of dust and gas mark the death throes of an ancient red-giant star, as captured by Gemini South, one-half of the International Gemini Observatory, operated by NSF’s NOIRLab. The resulting structure, said to resemble an old style of English jug, is a rarely seen bipolar reflection nebula. International Gemini Observatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA Image processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab), J. Miller (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Rodriguez (Gemini Observatory/NSF’s NOIRLab), M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab)

The double lobe of the nebula refers to the two looped structures originating from the nebula’s heart, a red giant star coming to the end of its life. Lower-mass stars like our sun reach this stage when they begin to run out of fuel and puff up to a large size, before throwing off layers of gas to create a planetary nebula.

“In about five billion years from now, when our sun has burned through its supply of hydrogen, it too will become a red giant and eventually evolve into a planetary nebula,” NOIRLab writes. “In the very distant future, all that will be left of our solar system will be a nebula as vibrant as the Toby Jug Nebula with the slowly cooling sun at its heart.”

The red giant, called HR3126, is thought to be partially responsible for the unusual double-lobed shape of the nebula. Astronomers theorize that the red giant once had a companion star, which has since been pulled apart into a dense disk of matter which rotates around the red giant. This shredding of the companion star could have spurred the formation of the two-lobed structure.

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Stunning image taken by Webb to celebrate its first birthday | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

Stunning image taken by Webb to celebrate its first birthday | Digital Trends

Today marks the one-year anniversary of the first images shared from the James Webb Space Telescope, and to celebrate this milestone NASA has shared yet another gorgeous image of space captured by Webb.

The new image shows a star system called Rho Ophiuchi; a busy region where new stars are being born amide swirls of dust and gas. Located just 390 light-years away, Webb was able to capture the region in stunning detail using its NIRCam instrument.

The first-anniversary image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope displays star birth like it’s never been seen before, full of detailed, impressionistic texture. The subject is the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. It is a relatively small, quiet stellar nursery, but you’d never know it from Webb’s chaotic close-up. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, K. Pontoppidan (STScI), A. Pagan (STScI)

The region is made up of multiple star systems, with large amounts of gas such as molecular hydrogen, which is shown in red. As stars are formed in the swirl of dust and gas, they give off light and radiation in a phenomenon called stellar wind. This wind blows away material from around the young stars, both preventing other stars from being formed too nearby and also sculpting the dust and gas into distinctive shapes.

Particularly bright bursts of energy are given off by young stars which form jets, throwing out material from both poles and creating the red streaks of molecular hydrogen at the top and right of the image.

Stars are the only objects being formed in this image though. Several of the stars also have shadows around them which indicate the presence of protoplanetary disks. These disks of dust and gas form around a star, gradually growing over time due to the star’s gravity. Clumps start to form within the disk, beginning with tiny particles and building up to become larger and larger over time. Eventually, the clumps can gain enough mass to form a solid core, creating the basis for a new planet. So the systems in this image include not only new stars but also forming planets as well.

There are a total of around 50 young stars shown in the image, each of them similar to our sun. The clouds of dust around the stars are warmed by their radiation, with bright infrared sources which Webb is able to pick up on thanks to its infrared instruments.

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VLT Survey Telescope images nebula 15,000 light-years away | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

VLT Survey Telescope images nebula 15,000 light-years away | Digital Trends

A gorgeous new image of a distant nebula has been captured by the European Southern Observatory (ESO)’s VLT Survey Telescope. It shows part of the Sh2-284 nebula, a rarely imaged but stunning cloud of dust and gas located a massive 15,000 light-years away from Earth.

This nebula is a busy region of star formation, known as a stellar nursery, where young stars are born from swirls of dust and gas. As this matter moves around it forms into small clumps, which gradually grow and gather more material until they have enough gravity to attract material to them, becoming the seed of a new star. As these bright young stars are born they illuminate the dust and gas around them, creating the glowing nebula effect.

This spectacular picture of the Sh2-284 nebula has been captured in great detail by the VLT Survey Telescope at ESO’s Paranal Observatory. Sh2-284 is a star formation region, and at its center, there is a cluster of young stars, dubbed Dolidze 25. The radiation from this cluster is powerful enough to ionize the hydrogen gas in the nebula’s cloud. It is this ionization that produces its bright orange and red colors. ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU

The newly born stars also sculpt the matter around them. “The winds from the central cluster of stars push away the gas and dust in the nebula, hollowing out its center,” ESO explains. “As the winds encounter denser pockets of material, these offer more resistance meaning that the areas around them are eroded away first. This creates several pillars that can be seen along the edges of Sh2-284 pointing at the center of the nebula, such as the one on the right-hand side of the frame. While these pillars might look small in the image, they are in fact several light-years wide and contain vast amounts of gas and dust out of which new stars form.”

The VLT Survey Telescope is a huge 2.6-meter telescope located in the Paranal Observatory in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. This location, at high altitude with very little rainfall and far from major sources of light pollution, is ideal for large ground-based telescopes. The VLT Survey Telescope is located next to the Very Large Telescope, and together the pair cover a range of wavelengths from ultraviolet to near-infrared. The Survey Telescope takes mostly wide-angle images and helps select specific targets which can be imaged in more detail by the VLT.

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Hubble image of the week shows an unusual jellyfish galaxy | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

Hubble image of the week shows an unusual jellyfish galaxy | Digital Trends

This week’s image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows an unusual type of galaxy named for its aquatic look-alike: a jellyfish.

The jellyfish galaxy JO206 is shown below in an image taken using Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 instrument. Located 700 million light-years away, in the constellation of Aquarius, this image of the galaxy shows both the bright center of the galaxy and its long tendrils reaching out toward the bottom right. It is these tendrils that give jellyfish galaxies their names, and they are formed through a process called ram pressure stripping.

The jellyfish galaxy JO206 trails across this image from the NASA/European Space Agency Hubble Space Telescope, showcasing a colorful star-forming disk surrounded by a pale, luminous cloud of dust. A handful of foreground bright stars with crisscross diffraction spikes stands out against an inky black backdrop at the bottom of the image. JO206 is located over 700 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Aquarius. ESA/Hubble & NASA, M. Gullieuszik and the GASP team

When a galaxy moves through a galaxy cluster, it isn’t just moving through empty space. It moves through diffuse clouds of plasma gas called the intracluster medium, which is hotter than the surrounding space outside the cluster. As the galaxy moves through this medium, it creates drag, which pushes gas out of the galaxy and causes it to form a long tail that trails behind the galaxy’s main body. These tails are the tendrils of the jellyfish galaxy.

Hubble has previously captured a number of other jellyfish galaxies, like JO201 and JW100. Hubble is often used to study these galaxies because of the high rates of star formation in their tails, as astronomers want to understand how star formation might differ when it occurs far away from a galaxy’s center. But it turns out that the process appears to be very similar, whether it occurs in the center of a jellyfish galaxy or at the edges of its tails.

“The tentacles of jellyfish galaxies give astronomers a unique opportunity to study star formation under extreme conditions, far from the influence of the galaxy’s main disk,” Hubble scientists write. “Surprisingly, Hubble revealed that there are no striking differences between star formation in the disks of jellyfish galaxies and star formation in their tentacles, which suggests the environment of newly formed stars has only a minor influence on their formation.”

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Peer inside the bar of a barred spiral galaxy in Webb image | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

Peer inside the bar of a barred spiral galaxy in Webb image | Digital Trends

The newest image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a stunning display of dust and stars that form the bar of the barred spiral galaxy NCG 5068, located 17 million light-years away. Like our galaxy, the Milky Way, this galaxy has a central bar that is a more concentrated region of stars and dust compared to the arms that reach out from the galaxy’s center.

The image was taken using two of Webb’s instruments, the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) and the Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam). By looking in both the mid- and near-infrared wavelengths, Webb is able to pick out features like the swirls of dust and gas, as well as the stars in this region, with the bar of the galaxy glowing in the top left of the image.

A delicate tracery of dust and bright star clusters threads across this image from the James Webb Space Telescope. The bright tendrils of gas and stars belong to the barred spiral galaxy NGC 5068, whose bright central bar is visible in the upper left of this image. NGC 5068 lies around 17 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Virgo. ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, J. Lee and the PHANGS-JWST Team

The bar of a barred spiral galaxy is typically a busy region of star formation, so this image was collected as part of a study into star formation in nearby galaxies. The Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS project (PHANGS) involves both Webb and the Hubble Space Telescope, along with other ground-based telescopes like the Very Large Telescope and the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array, and is a survey to take high-resolution images like this one of regions of star formation.

For this project, “Webb collected images of 19 nearby star-forming galaxies, which astronomers could then combine with catalogs from Hubble of 10,000 star clusters, spectroscopic mapping of 20,000 star-forming emission nebulae from the Very Large Telescope (VLT), and observations of 12 000 dark, dense molecular clouds identified by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA),” Webb scientists write. “These observations span the electromagnetic spectrum and give astronomers an unprecedented opportunity to piece together the minutiae of star formation.”

Webb is particularly useful for studying star formation, because it looks in the infrared wavelengths. This allows its instruments to see through clouds of dust, which would be opaque in the visible light wavelength. In the image above, you can see the dust forming a green web-like structure between the stars, which glow as points of light. Bubbles of gas are shown in red.

You can also check out the views taken by MIRI and NIRCam individually.

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Image shows new stars being born in Lupus 3 nebula | Digital Trends

tech FranklinWilbur

Image shows new stars being born in Lupus 3 nebula | Digital Trends

A gorgeous new image of a nebular 500 light-years away gives a peek into the process of star formation.

This image from the Dark Energy Camera shows both the dark cloud of Lupus 3 and the shining bright young stars of the nebula Bernes 149. The dark cloud here is essential to the star formation process, as it is a collection of gas and dust which provides the building blocks for new stars to be born. Known as a dark nebula because of its density, Lupus 3 obscures the light of the stars behind it, giving the impression of a swath of black across the starry sky.

The two young, low-mass proto-stars HR 5999 and HR 6000 illuminate nearby dust, creating the reflection nebula Bernes 149. These stars grew out of the dusty dark cloud of Lupus 3, part of a larger complex of as many as nine dark clouds. CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA/ T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF’s NOIRLab) Image Processing: D. de Martin & M. Zamani (NSF’s NOIRLab)

The other type of nebula shown here, Bernes 149, is a type called a reflection nebula. This is also a cloud of dust and gas, but less dense than the dark nebula. Instead of blocking out light from stars, this cloud reflects that light, making the cloud appear to glow. Unlike emission nebulae, in which the gas actually glows because it is ionized, the reflection nebula isn’t producing light of its own but is still reflecting enough light to be seen.

Within the nebulae, you can see bright points of light which are young stars. Right in the middle of the image are two close-together stars, HR 5999 and HR 6000, which are blue because of their young age. They are just 1 million years old and aren’t yet big or old enough for nuclear fusion to be occurring in their cores. That means they are not yet main sequence stars, but are instead pre-main-sequence stars that glow because of the strong gravity compressing the matter within them, warming it up.

When stars are born and are young, they give off strong stellar winds which blow away dust and gas from around them. That prevents more stars from being born nearby, which creates an equilibrium to keep the number of new stars being born in balance. Studying sites of star formation like these nebulae can help astronomers learn more about this process and about the early stages of the stellar life cycle.

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