James Webb captures an elusive 'cosmic tarantula'
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has once again grabbed the headlines. This time for capturing a cosmic tarantula. The $10 billion telescope's latest image of Tarantula Nebula, formally known as 30 Doradus, shows the star-forming region in unprecedented detail. The image reveals tens of thousands of young stars, distant background galaxies, and dust and gas in the nebula.
Why does this story matter?
Despite years of stargazing, star formation is still shrouded in mystery. This is mainly because of our inability to see behind the thick clouds of nebulas. Well, not anymore. With the JWST, we can look through these clouds and understand more about how stars form. As we have seen before, it's just one of those JWST things.
The nebula is the brightest in the Local Group
The Tarantula Nebula got the nickname for its dusty filaments resembling the hairy spider. It is located 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The nebula is the brightest star-forming region in the Local Group, a collective of galaxies including the Milky Way. The new image shows that the region also resembles a burrowing tarantula's home, lined with its silk.
JWST's 3 high-resolution infrared instruments captured the image
The latest image of the Tarantula Nebula with never-seen-before details is a work of JWST's three high-resolution infrared instruments. With the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the hollowed-out cavity of the nebula and the dense areas around it were seen clearly. The Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) caught a star formation in action, while the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) revealed the nebula's unseen dust and gas environment.
Powerful radiation of young stars create hollow cavity in nebula
The centered cavity in the NIRCam image shows that it is hollowed out by the radiation of a cluster of young stars, sparkling pale blue in the picture. Only the dense surrounding areas withstand the powerful stellar winds from these stars. These areas form pillars containing protostars, which will later emerge from their cloud of dust and take part in shaping the nebula.
Longer mid-infrared wavelength light penetrates dust particles
Without JWST's Mid-Infrared Instrument, we would have never been able to see the gas and dust environment of the nebula. Shorter wavelengths of light are either absorbed or scattered by dust particles. However, longer mid-infrared wavelengths penetrated dust particles, revealing the unseen environment.
What is the importance of star formation in Tarantula Nebula?
The Tarantula Nebula has always attracted interest from astronomers who study star formation. This is because the nebula has a similar chemical composition as gigantic star-forming regions from when the cosmos was only a few billion years old. Now, astronomers will be able to compare star formation in the nebula with JWST's deep observation of distant galaxies from the actual cosmic past.
