James Webb Telescope gives a glimpse of how stars are born
New images by the James Webb Space Telescope will help space scientists better understand what happened during the first million years of the Milky Way’s evolution
The James Webb Space Telescope (JSWT) released new images September 12, 2022, showing the interior of the Orion Nebula, a star-forming region located 1,350 years away from the Earth. The images show us how stars are formed and are similar to how the solar system looked 4.5 billion years ago. This photo shows the inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by the JSWT’s NIRCam instrument.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) released new images September 12, 2022, showing the interior of the Orion Nebula, a star-forming region located 1,350 years away from the Earth. The images show us how stars are formed and are similar to how the solar system looked 4.5 billion years ago. This photo shows the inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by the JSWT’s NIRCam instrument.
The images are of a ‘stellar nursery’ in the Orion Nebula. Such nurseries are full of large amounts of stardust, which make them difficult for scientists to study using the Hubble Space Telescope as it relies mainly on light. This photo shows a planet forming disks of gas and dust around a young star.
But the JWST detects the infrared light emitted by the cosmos which enables it to see through the stardust. The JWST has been developed jointly by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency. This photo shows the inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by both the Hubble Space Telescope (left) and the JWST (right).
The project, which was started in 2017, is five years in the making. Here, the inner region of the Orion Nebula as seen by both the Spitzer Space Telescope (left) and the James Webb Space Telescope (right) is seen.
The project will help space scientists better understand what happened during the first million years of the Milky Way’s planetary evolution. This photo shows the Northern region of M42 observed with detector A of NIRCam during observation of the Orion Bar.
