NASA and ESA sporadically release images from the James Webb Space Telescope that are spectacular but also serve science. The latter concerns the study of a massive open star cluster of young stars, as there are several in the star-forming regions of the Large Magellanic Cloud.
This will also interest you
[EN VIDÉO] Understanding the James Webb Space Telescope's Mission in a Minute The James Webb Space Telescope, the new flagship of space observation, will be launched on December 18…
The James Webb Space Telescope continues to delight us and this time with the magnification of one of the regions of feverish formation of young stars found in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC for Large Magellanic Cloud in English), a satellite galaxy of our Milky Way. This nursery is a nebula that spans about 1,630 light-years in the generally unexplored southwestern region of the LMC and contains a massive collection of young stars whose radiation causes the nebula's hydrogen atoms to ionize, known as N79 . It is therefore an example of a region of ionized interstellar atomic hydrogen called the H II region (neutral atomic hydrogen is referred to as HI by astrophysicists).
N79 is generally considered a younger version of the Tarantula Nebula (also called 30 Doradus or NGC 2070 or Caldwell 103). This is another region of molecular clouds where gravitational collapse forms hotbeds of young stars, open star clusters, which are well known because their apparent magnitude is close to 5 and therefore easily visible to the eye. Naked as a small and bright condensation again at the immediate periphery of the Large Magellanic Cloud, about 160,000 light-years from the Solar System.
This zoom video begins with a wide view of the Milky Way and ends with a close-up of a rich star-forming region in the nearby Large Magellanic Cloud in the southern constellation Dorado. The specific region pictured, 30 Doradus, is also known as the Tarantula Nebula. The final view of these clouds was captured by ESO's VLT and Vista and overlaid with new radio data from Alma. The Alma data shows bright yellow-red streaks of cold, dense gas that has the potential to collapse and form new stars. © ESO/Digitalized Sky Survey 2/N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)/R. Gendler (http://www.robgendlerastropics.com/), Alma (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/Wong et al., ESO/M.-R. Cioni/Vista Magellanic Cloud Survey. Acknowledgments: Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit. Music: John Dyson
N79, a laboratory for understanding star formation in the early universe
The image revealed by NASA and ESA is in false color (photons with a wavelength of 7.7 microns are shown in blue, 10 microns in cyan, 15 microns in yellow and 21 microns in red) because it was taken with Webb's mid-infrared instrument (Miri) in the mid-infrared spectral band to which our eyes are not sensitive. It is accompanied by a long commentary, from which we include some excerpts.
He explains that star-forming regions like N79 “are of interest to astronomers because their chemical composition is similar to the gigantic star-forming regions observed when the universe was only a few billion years old and star formation was at its peak.” The star-forming regions of our galaxy, the Milky Way, do not produce stars at the same rate as N79 and have a different chemical composition. Webb now offers astronomers the opportunity to compare and contrast observations of star formation in N79 with the telescope's extensive observations of distant galaxies in the early universe.
These observations of N79 are part of a Webb program that studies the evolution of circumstellar disks and envelopes of emerging stars over a wide mass range and at different stages of evolution. “Webb’s sensitivity will allow scientists to detect planet-forming dust disks around stars with masses similar to our Sun at the distance of the LMC for the first time.”