The Webb Space Telescope reveals new, unexplained structures at the center of the galaxy
NASA has unveiled a spectacular new image of the Milky Way taken by the James Webb Space Telescope, showing ever-increasing detail of a region near the core of our home galaxy, filled with what the space agency calls " unexplained structures " a needle shape. which have intrigued and disconcerted scientists.
The James Webb Space Telescope, a powerful infrared instrument, managed to take a detailed snapshot of Sagittarius C, a central region of the Milky Way where stars are born and which is about 300 light years away from the giant black hole that composes it. central hub of our galaxy.
The image contains around 500,000 twinkling stars plus a cluster of protostars emerging from dense dark clouds of dust and gas (protostars are small stars that gain mass before becoming full-fledged stars).
In addition to the stars, the telescope revealed feathery wisps, believed to be emissions of ionized hydrogen and colored cyan in the image. Usually, these clumps are the product of massive stars emitting excited photons that ionize the surrounding hydrogen gas.
A look back
Within these clumps, scientists are puzzled by the existence of needle-like striated structures that are created randomly throughout the ionized hydrogen. Scientists don't know what they are and are determined to look for more data to find out.
A highlight of structures in the cloud NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Samuel Crowe (UVA)
“There has never been infrared data on this region with the level of resolution and sensitivity that we get with Webb, so we are seeing a lot of features here for the first time,” said Samuel Crowe, an undergraduate student and principal investigator at the University of Virginia . “Webb reveals an incredible amount of detail, allowing us to study star formation in this type of environment in a way that wasn't possible before.”
The Webb launched in late 2021, with its first images released in 2022. The telescope was launched with the goal of peering into the early periods of the universe, searching for exoplanets, examining the first galaxies, and also tracking what stars. formats, like the ones captured in this last image.
Scientists are excited about this new shot because not only is it beautiful, but it could also help researchers understand how stars appear in the first place.
“The galactic center is a crowded and tumultuous place,” said Rubén Fedriani, a researcher and co-investigator at the Instituto Astrofisica de Andalucía. “There are turbulent, magnetized clouds of gas that are forming stars, which then impact the surrounding gas with their outgoing winds, jets and radiation. Webb has given us a lot of data about this extreme environment, and we're just starting to dig into it.”
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The article Webb Space Telescope reveals new unexplained structures at the center of the galaxy comes from Economic Scenarios .
This is a machine translation of a post published on Scenari Economici at the URL https://scenarieconomici.it/il-telescopio-spaziale-webb-rivela-nuove-strutture-inspiegabili-al-centro-della-galassia/ on Sun, 26 Nov 2023 13:47:19 +0000.