NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI Thousands of young stars have been revealed for the first time by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)—and in extremely high resolution. 30 Doradus, also called the Tarantula Nebula, is one of the most frequently studied regions of the night sky. It is about 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy orbiting our Milky Way. The Tarantula Nebula’s fame comes from its status as the largest and brightest star-forming region known to astronomers in any of the galaxies in our cosmic neighborhood. Over 800,000 stars and protostars are found within the nebula. It got its name from threads that look like a spider web. Webb’s new images reveal detailed structure and composition of its gas and dust. They also show distant background galaxies, as well as the hottest, most massive stars known. Three images were created. The most detailed image (above) comes from JWST’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). This 14,557 x 8,418 pixel, 122 megapixel image can be downloaded for free in full resolution. It reveals stars previously obscured by cosmic dust that JWST can now look directly at thanks to NIRCam’s high resolution at near-infrared wavelengths. You can see an active region of massive young blue stars. In the longer wavelengths of light captured by the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), Webb focuses on … [+] the region surrounding the central star cluster and reveals a very different view of the Tarantula Nebula. In this light, the cluster’s young hot stars fade in brilliance, and glowing gas and dust appear in front. Abundant hydrocarbons illuminate the surfaces of dust clouds, shown in blue and purple. Much of the nebula takes on a more eerie, diffuse appearance because the mid-infrared light is able to show more of what’s going on deeper within the clouds. Embedded protostars are still visible in their dusty cocoons, including a bright group at the top left of center. Other areas appear dark, such as in the lower right corner of the image. This indicates the densest dust regions in the nebula, which even mid-infrared wavelengths cannot penetrate. These could be the sites of future or current star formation. MIRI was contributed by ESA and NASA, with the instrument designed and built by a consortium of nationally funded European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in collaboration with JPL and the University of Arizona. NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI This image, above, is from Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which records at longer infrared wavelengths. In it glows cooler gas and dust glows and embedded protostars. The Tarantula Nebula has a similar type of chemical composition to the vast star-forming regions seen at the “cosmic noon” of the universe, when the universe was only a few billion years old and star formation peaked. Webb’s Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) reveals what’s really going on in an interesting region… [+] of the Tarantula Nebula. Astronomers focused the powerful instrument on what looked like a small bubble in the image from Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). However, the spectra reveal a very different picture of a young star blowing a bubble in the gas surrounding it. The signature of atomic hydrogen, shown in blue, appears in the star itself but not immediately around it. Instead, it appears outside the “bubble”, which the spectra show is actually “filled” with molecular hydrogen (green) and complex hydrocarbons (red). This shows that the bubble is actually the top of a dense plume of dust and gas ejected by radiation from the cluster of massive young stars to its lower right (see full NIRCam image). It does not appear as pillar-like as some other structures in the nebula because there is not much color contrast with the surrounding area. The harsh stellar wind from the massive young stars in the nebula breaks apart molecules outside the pillar, but inside they are preserved, forming a soft cocoon for the star. This star is still too young to clear its environment by blowing bubbles – NIRSpec captured it just as it began to emerge from the protective cloud from which it formed. Without Webb’s infrared analysis, the discovery of this star birth in action would not have been possible. NIRSpec was built for the European Space Agency (ESA) by a consortium of European companies led by Airbus Defense and Space (ADS) with NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center providing the detector and micro-aperture subsystems. NASA, ESA, CSA and STScI Finally, here are images from JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec), which took spectra — fingerprints of light — from a small bubble inside the Tarantula Nebula. Atomic hydrogen is blue, green shows molecular hydrogen, and red is complex hydrocarbons (red). It shows that the bubble is at the top of a dense column of dust and gas ejected by radiation from the star cluster seen in the main image of this article. I wish you clear skies and open eyes.
