NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Captures a Cosmic Tarantula

This mosaic image, which spans 340 light-years, was captured by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). Tens of thousands of newly discovered newborn stars that were previously hidden by cosmic dust are shown, together with a new perspective on the star-forming region of the Tarantula Nebula. The most active region is pale blue and seems to be glistening with enormous young stars. Red stars that are still embedded in the nebula's dust and have not yet broken free of its cocoon are strewn among them. Due to its unrivaled resolution at near-infrared wavelengths, NIRCam is able to identify these dust-covered stars.

An older star conspicuously exhibits NIRCam's signature eight diffraction spikes, a feature of the telescope's design, towards the top of the nebula's cavity, to the upper left of the cluster of young stars. This star's top central spike almost shoots upward toward a characteristic bubble in the cloud. This bubble is being blown by young stars as they start to carve out their own cavities while still being encircled by dusty debris. To examine this region more closely and ascertain the star's and the gas around it, astronomers employed two of Webb's spectrographs. Astronomers can determine the age of the nebula and how many generations of star birth it has experienced using this spectral data.

Astronomers can tell that the nebula is rich in complex hydrocarbons because farther from the zone of hot, young stars, cooler gas takes on a rust tint. The substance that will eventually give rise to stars is this thick gas. Some of the gas and dust being swept away by the powerful stars' winds will accumulate and, with the help of gravity, form new stars.

The University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin's Advanced Technology Center collaborated to create NIRCam.

The Tarantula Nebula, also known as 30 Doradus, is an area well-known to astronomers researching star formation. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope offers a fresh viewpoint on the object. Its likeness to the spider itself is where its nickname came from. Webb, though, believes that the area as a whole resembles a tarantula's tunnel, which is coated with the spider's own spun silk. Numerous newly discovered stars, many of which are among the thousands of young, still-forming stars found in the Tarantula Nebula by Webb.

The stars, structure, and composition of the nebula are revealed at a level of detail previously unattainable by a variety of Webb's high-resolution infrared instruments working together. Throughout its mission, Webb will be used by astronomers to learn more about star formation and the life cycle of stars. This has consequences for the evolution of heavy chemical elements, which are necessary for the existence of life as we know it, as well as for the genesis of our own star, the Sun.

Webb concentrates on the region surrounding the primary star cluster in the longer wavelengths of light acquired by its Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which provides a radically different perspective of the Tarantula Nebula. The young, blazing stars of the cluster begin to lose their brightness in this light, revealing glowing gas and dust in its place. The dust clouds, depicted in blue and purple, are illuminated by an abundance of hydrocarbons. Mid-infrared light can reveal more of what is happening deeper inside the clouds, giving the nebula in general a more ghostly, diffuse aspect. The very top border of the image, to the left of center, is a bright clump of still-embedded protostars that are visible within their dusty cocoons.

Darkness can be seen in other places, such as the lower-right corner of the picture. This points to the dusty regions of the nebula that are so dense that even mid-infrared wavelengths cannot penetrate them. These locations might be where stars are formed now or in the future.

ESA and NASA contributed to MIRI, which was conceived and constructed by a group of publicly financed European Institutes (The MIRI European Consortium) in collaboration with JPL and the University of Arizona.

A cosmic creation tale once took place in space and time: The James Webb Space Telescope of NASA discovered thousands of newborn stars in the stellar nursery known as 30 Doradus. The Tarantula Nebula is a well-known target for astronomers researching star formation because of the way its hazy filaments appeared in earlier telescope photographs. Webb also displays newborn stars and far-off background galaxies, as well as the precise structure and gas and dust makeup of the nebula.

The Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group, the galaxies closest to our Milky Way, and is situated in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, only 161,000 light-years distant. The hottest and largest stars that astronomers are aware of can be found there. Webb has three of his high-resolution infrared telescopes pointed at the Tarantula. The area appears to be the silk-lined inside of a tarantula that burrows, as seen by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). By blasting radiation from a cluster of massive young stars that glow pale blue in the image, the nebula's cavity in the middle of the NIRCam image has been hollowed out. Only the nebula's densest outer regions are able to withstand erosion by the strong stellar winds of these stars, resulting in pillars that seem to point back toward the cluster. These pillars are home to developing protostars that will ultimately break free of their dusty cocoons and take turns sculpting the nebula.

The Tarantula Nebula's interesting section may be seen in greater detail thanks to Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). On what appeared to be a little bubble feature in the Webb's Near-Infrared Camera picture, researchers concentrated the powerful device (NIRCam). A young star blowing a bubble in its surrounding gas paints a totally different picture in the spectrum, though.

The star itself displays the blue atomic hydrogen signal, but not the area immediately around it. Instead, it is visible outside the so-called "bubble," which, according to spectra, is actually "filled" with molecular hydrogen (green) and complex hydrocarbons (red). This shows that the bubble is, in fact, the top of a dense pillar of dust and gas that is being irradiated by radiation from the cluster of massive young stars to its lower right (see the full NIRCam image). Because there is not much color contrast with the area around it, it does not appear as pillar-like as some other formations in the nebula.

The molecules outside the pillar are being broken apart by the abrasive stellar wind from the young, massive stars in the nebula, but those inside are being retained, creating a comfortable cocoon for the star. NIRSpec has captured this star as it just started to emerge from the protective cloud from which it was produced; it is still too young to be clearing up its surrounds by blowing bubbles. The finding of this star formation in action would not have been conceivable without Webb's resolution at infrared wavelengths.

NIRSpec was developed for the European Space Agency (ESA) by a group of European firms lead by Airbus Defence and Space (ADS), with the detector and micro-shutter subsystems coming from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

One extremely young star was observed doing just that by Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec). Previously, astronomers hypothesized that this star might be a little older and already in the process of removing a bubble from its vicinity. NIRSpec revealed that the star still had a shielding cloud of dust surrounding it and was only just starting to emerge from its pillar. Without Webb's high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths, this episode of star formation-in-action could not have been discovered.                                                                      

The region has a different appearance when examined in the longer infrared wavelengths picked up by Webb's Mid-infrared Instrument (MIRI). As the blazing stars disappear, colder gas and dust begin to glow. Points of light in the clouds around the stellar nursery are embedded protostars that are still developing mass. Longer mid-infrared wavelengths can penetrate the nebula's dust, whereas shorter wavelengths are absorbed or dispersed by the dust particles and never reach Webb to be observed. This allows us to see a previously hidden cosmic environment.

The Tarantula Nebula's chemical makeup resembles that of the massive star-forming areas seen at the universe's "cosmic noon," which is one of the reasons why astronomers find the nebula intriguing. Star formation was at its height at that time, when the universe was only a few billion years old. The Tarantula Nebula is a star-forming zone, however star-forming regions in our Milky Way galaxy do not produce stars at the same pace and are chemically different. As a result, the Tarantula is the most accurate (i.e., simplest to observe in detail) representation of what was taking place in the cosmos as it approached its bright high noon. Astronomers will have the chance to compare and contrast Tarantula Nebula star formation studies with deep views of far-off galaxies from the actual cosmic noon period made with Webb.

Despite humanity's long history of stargazing, there are still many unanswered questions about how stars are formed. A large number of them result from our earlier inability to obtain clear views of what was occurring behind the dense clouds of star nurseries. Webb is just getting started with rewriting the story of how stars are created, but it has already started to unveil a universe that has never been seen before.

The most important observatory for space science in the world is the James Webb Space Telescope. Webb will investigate the mystifying architecture and origins of our cosmos and our part in it while also looking beyond our solar system to faraway planets surrounding other stars. The European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency are partners in the international Webb program, which is run by NASA.

By SPACE TELESCOPE SCIENCE INSTITUTE