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It’s been a few months since beautiful images of space were seen from the James Webb Space Telescope, but the size of a $10 billion tennis court has re-formed with a surprising treatment of a nearby galaxy.
Released today by NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), the image shows a star-forming region in the Triangle galaxy, also called M33, which can be seen alongside the much more famous Andromeda galaxy (M31). ).
It is about 2.7 million light years away. So the JWST image shows what it looked like 2.7 million years ago: that’s how long it took for its light to travel to the space telescope’s cameras.
massive stars
The colorful image shows NGC 604, a nebula containing more than 200 stars that are around 3.5 million years old. That makes them very young stars.
These are among the most massive and hottest stars that can be found in the night sky. Some of these B and O type stars have more than 100 times the mass of the Sun. Rarely in the universe are such large stars found in such dense concentrations. NGC 604 is about 1,300 light years in diameter.
New details
The data was captured using two JWST imagers: the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), and NASA and ESA have released the images separately, as well as a composite.
Of course, NGC 604 has been imaged before, but the JWST data reveals new details. Filaments of diffuse red gas and huge bubbles can be seen within the gas. It is this gas from which stars are formed. But the stars’ gravity also creates holes in the gas. The image also shows molecular hydrogen and carbon-based molecules (called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), two of the building blocks of stars.
JWST launched on Christmas Day 2021 and observes the universe from a point called L2 where the gravity of the Earth and the Sun combine to create a stable location. It is one million kilometers from Earth, about four times the distance from Earth to the Moon.
Wishing you clear skies and wide eyes.
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