It Is 200,000 Light-Years Away From Earth.. James Webb Depicts The Birth Of A Star Cluster In Magellan
A picture of the James Webb telescope shows a star cluster known as NGC 346, located 200,000 light-years from Earth, where a constellation of stars is forming.
The Webb telescope's infrared camera has tracked clusters, arcs and nebulae of gas and dust - which feed the observed stellar nursery.
The star cluster NGC 346 is located in a small galaxy called Magellan, which is located close to our own galaxy - the Milky Way.
This star cluster can be seen as an example of how stars are formed. NGC 346 contains relatively low concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium.
Thus, the conditions surrounding this star cluster resemble, to some degree, those that existed at the dawn of the history of the universe during the formation of stars.
Previously, and before the James Webb telescope, space observatories were able to track large objects in space, but with the Webb telescope, with its extreme sensitivity and extreme accuracy, astronomers became able to track the smallest objects.
"For the first time, we can see the full stages of star formation in other galaxies," says Olivia Jones, a researcher at the UK Astronomy Technology Center in Edinburgh.
"Before, with the Spitzer telescope, which was one of the great telescopes at NASA's American space station, we could track massive objects, those five to eight times the size of our sun," Olivia adds.
And the researcher continues: “But with the Webb telescope, we are able to track objects whose sizes do not exceed one tenth of the size of the sun. Hence, it has become possible to track very small stars while they are still in the process of being formed, and with accuracy it is possible to determine the impact of that formation on the surrounding environment. As can be seen in the image, the environment looks very dynamic.”
A gas is active in this picture at temperatures of 10,000 degrees Celsius. In contrast, the James Webb telescope can detect gas as cold as minus 200 degrees.
Astronomers refer to "metals" when discussing elements heavier than hydrogen and helium - the stuff planets are made of.
One of the big questions, then, centered on whether metal-poor environments, such as cluster NGC 346, had enough dusty material to form rocky worlds.
Planet officially known as NGC 346
And the image taken by the Webb telescope of the star cluster NGC 346 indicates that it possesses this ability. Even the smallest objects observed in the image are surrounded by dusty materials.
Accordingly, it can be said that the way the universe was formed at the dawn of history was in the way that the James Webb telescope observed planet formation, according to Margaret Meixner, of the Universities Space Research Association, in the United States.
Sources reported that the James Webb telescope was also able to detect objects outside the solar system. One such planet, officially known as LHS 475 b, is about the same size as Earth.
With the help of the NASA Exploration Program space telescope TESS, the way the universe was formed was guessed, but the James Webb telescope was able very quickly to erase all the doubts surrounding the matter.
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