Since NASA shared the first images from the James Webb Space Telescope in July 2022, the space observatory has continued to amaze with its ability to capture deep space in exquisite detail, such as the Penguin and the Egg image (seen at top) that celebrated Webb’s second anniversary. From “Cosmic Cliffs,” to an awe-inspiring image of a cloud complex filled with gas and stars, Webb has captured the cosmos in unprecedented detail.
Carina Nebula
Among the first images released by NASA was an image of the Carina Nebula, providing a rare peek into stars in their earliest rapid stages of formation. The image, captured in infrared light by Webb, unveiled emerging stellar nurseries and individual stars that are completely hidden in visible-light pictures. Webb’s sensitivity to infrared light allowed it to peer through the cosmic dust and reveal the hidden objects.
The image showcases the edge of a star-forming region known as NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. The Cosmic Cliffs give the impression of a craggy mountain ridgeline, with the tallest of the “peaks” being about 7 light-years high. According to NASA, the cavernous area, carved from the nebula by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely hot stars, appears in the center of the bubble, above the area shown in the image.
Another feature captured by Webb are protostellar jets, which shoot out from some of the young stars. The youngest sources appear as red dots in the dark, dusty region of the cloud. Webb also caught objects in the earliest, rapid phases of star formation, which are difficult to capture. NASA remarked the observations of NGC 3324 will help shed light on the process of star formation.
Crab Nebula
A little over a year after capturing the Carina Nebula in unprecedented detail, Webb shared an image of an exploded star 6,500 light-years away. The Crab Nebula is the result of a core-collapse supernova from the death of a massive star. According to NASA, the event was bright enough to view in the daytime on Earth in 1054 CE.
On the nebula’s exterior lie curtains of glowing red and orange material. Its interior shell showcases large-scale loops of mottled filaments of yellow-white and green, studded with clumps and knots. A faint, wispy ring of white material encompasses the center of the nebula, while around and within the supernova remnant are many points of blue, red, and yellow.
The Webb telescope, with its sensitive infrared capabilities, is advancing Crab Nebula research. “Where dust is seen in the Crab is interesting because it differs from other supernova remnants, like Cassiopeia A and Supernova 1987A,” explained Nathan Smith of the Steward Observatory at the University of Arizona. “In those objects, the dust is in the very center. In the Crab, the dust is found in the dense filaments of the outer shell. The Crab Nebula lives up to a tradition in astronomy: The nearest, brightest, and best-studied objects tend to be bizarre.”
Rho Ophiuchi
To celebrate the space observatory’s first anniversary, NASA shared a composite from Webb and NASA’s Chandra X-Ray Observatory. Rho Ophiuchi is a cloud complex filled with gas and stars of different sizes and ages about 390 light-years from Earth. Being one of the closest star-forming regions, it is an excellent resource for astronomers to study young stars.
The image shows a region containing approximately 50 young stars, all similar in mass to the Sun, or smaller. The darkest areas in the image are the densest, where thick dust cocoons still-forming protostars. According to the space agency, huge bipolar jets of molecular hydrogen, represented in red, dominate the image, appearing horizontally across the upper third and vertically on the right.
“Webb’s image of Rho Ophiuchi allows us to witness a very brief period in the stellar lifecycle with new clarity. Our own Sun experienced a phase like this, long ago, and now we have the technology to see the beginning of another’s star’s story,” said Klaus Pontoppidan, who served as Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.