#star-forming region

Webb's MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) shows the Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2) region in mid-infrared light, with warm dust glowing brightly. To the right is one clump of clouds that captured astronomers' attention. It is redder than the rest of the clouds in the image and corresponds to an area that other telescopes have shown to be one of the most molecularly rich regions known.

Image Credit: Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Adam Ginsburg (University of Florida), Nazar Budaiev (University of Florida), Taehwa Yoo (University of Florida); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

Webb captured this sparkling scene of star birth in Pismis 24, a young star cluster about 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius. This region is one of the best places to explore the properties of hot young stars and how they evolve. Read the full image description.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)

This image of the Horsehead Nebula from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope focuses on a portion of the horse’s “mane” that is about 0.8 light-years in width. It was taken with Webb’s NIRCam (Near-infrared Camera). The ethereal clouds that appear blue at the bottom of the image are filled with a variety of materials including hydrogen, methane, and water ice. Red-colored wisps extending above the main nebula represent both atomic and molecular hydrogen. In this area, known as a photodissociation region, ultraviolet light from nearby young, massive stars creates a mostly neutral, warm area of gas and dust between the fully ionized gas above and the nebula below. As with many Webb images, distant galaxies are sprinkled in the background. This image is composed of light at wavelengths of 1.4 and 2.5 microns (represented in blue), 3.0 and 3.23 microns (cyan), 3.35 microns (green), 4.3 microns (yellow), and 4.7 and 4.05 microns (red).

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Karl Misselt (University of Arizona), Alain Abergel (IAS, CNRS)

This image from the NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows the central portion of the star cluster IC 348. Astronomers combed the cluster in search of tiny, free-floating brown dwarfs: objects too small to be stars but larger than most planets. They found three brown dwarfs that are less than eight times the mass of Jupiter. The smallest weighs just three to four times Jupiter, challenging theories for star formation. The wispy curtains filling the image are interstellar material reflecting the light from the cluster’s stars – what is known as a reflection nebula. The material also includes carbon-containing molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. The bright star closest to the center of the frame is actually a pair of type B stars in a binary system, which are the most massive stars in the cluster. Winds from these stars may help sculpt the large loop seen on the right side of the field of view.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Kevin Luhman (PSU), Catarina Alves de Oliveira (ESA)

The full view of the 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. A vast region of ionized hydrogen, shown in cyan, wraps around an infrared-dark cloud, which is so dense that it blocks the light from distant stars behind it. Intriguing needle-like structures in the ionized hydrogen emission lack any uniform orientation. Researchers note the surprising extent of the ionized region, covering about 25 light-years. A cluster of protostars – stars that are still forming and gaining mass – are producing outflows that glow like a bonfire at the base of the large infrared-dark cloud, indicating that they are emerging from the cloud’s protective cocoon and will soon join the ranks of the more mature stars around them. Smaller infrared-dark clouds dot the scene, appearing like holes in the starfield. 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. This includes the rose-colored clouds on the right side of the image, which have never been seen in such detail.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Samuel Crowe (UVA)

The first anniversary image from NASA’s 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. Jets bursting from young stars crisscross the image, impacting the surrounding interstellar gas and lighting up molecular hydrogen, shown in red. Some stars display the telltale shadow of a circumstellar disk, the makings of future planetary systems. The young stars at the center of many of these disks are similar in mass to the Sun, or smaller. The heftiest in this image is the star S1, which appears amid a glowing cave it is carving out with its stellar winds in the lower half of the image. The lighter-colored gas surrounding S1 consists of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, a family of carbon-based molecules that are among the most common compounds found in space. For more detail on what is happening where in Webb’s image of Rho Ophiuchi, watch the video tour and read the press release.

Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (STScI)