Use of Mid-infrared measuring instrument With (MIRI) aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have captured stunning images of N79, a region of interstellar ionized hydrogen in the Large Magellanic Cloud.
This Hubble image shows star-forming region N79 located 163,000 light-years away in the constellation Sera. Image credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / Webb / M. Meixner.
N79 is a massive star-forming complex spanning about 1,630 light-years in the generally unexplored southwestern region of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring dwarf galaxy about 163,000 light-years from us.
This region is usually considered a younger version of the 30 Doradus, also known as the Tarantula Nebula.
N79 has a star formation efficiency more than twice that of Doradas 30 over the past 500,000 years.
This particular image centers on one of three giant molecular cloud complexes called N79 South (S1 for short).
The distinctive “starburst” pattern surrounding this bright object is a series of diffraction spikes.
“All telescopes that use mirrors to collect light, like Webb, have this form of artifact resulting from the design of the telescope,” Webb astronomers said.
“For Webb, the six largest starburst spikes appear due to the hexagonal symmetry of Webb's 18 primary mirror segments.”
“Such patterns are only noticeable around very bright and compact objects, where all the light comes from the same place.”
“Most galaxies appear very small to our eyes, but we don't see this pattern because they are dimmer and more spread out than a single star.”
“At the longer wavelengths of light captured by MIRI, Webb's view of N79 shows glowing gas and dust in the region.”
“This is because mid-infrared light can reveal what's going on deep within the cloud (whereas shorter wavelength light is absorbed or scattered by dust particles within the nebula). Still embedded Some protostars also appear in this region.”
Star-forming regions such as N79 are of interest to astronomers because their chemical composition is similar to that of giant star-forming regions observed in the early universe.
“The star-forming regions of our Milky Way galaxy are not producing stars at the same ferocious rate as N79 and have a different chemical composition,” the astronomers said.
“Webb now offers us the opportunity to compare and contrast observations of star formation in N79 with deep telescopic observations of distant galaxies in the early universe.”
“These observations of N79 are part of the Webb program to study the evolution of circumstellar disks and envelopes of forming stars over a wide range of masses and at different evolutionary stages.”
“Webb's sensitivity allows us to detect for the first time disks of planet-forming dust around stars of the same mass as the Sun at distances in the Large Magellanic Cloud.”
Source: www.sci.news
