NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has taken two new images of the star-forming region NGC 604,
located in the Triangulum galaxy, 2.7 million light-years away from Earth.
Sheltered among these dusty envelopes of gas are more than 200 of the hottest,
most massive kinds of stars, all in the early stages of their lives. The largest
of these stars can have more than 100 times the mass of our own Sun.
Using Webb’s powerful Near-Infrared Camera,
called NIRCam, the most noticeable features are tendrils and clumps of bright red emission,
extending out from areas that look like clearings, or large bubbles in the nebula.
Stellar winds from the brightest and hottest young stars have carved out these cavities,
while ultraviolet radiation ionizes the surrounding gas. This ionized hydrogen
appears as a white and blue ghostly glow. As you travel further from the
immediate clearings of dust, the deeper red signifies molecular hydrogen. This
cooler molecular gas can be the fuel for future generations of stars that are forming.
Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument, called MIRI, lets us see a new window into the
diverse and dynamic activity of this region. In the MIRI view of NGC 604,
there are noticeably fewer stars. This is because hot stars are much fainter at
these wavelengths of light, while the larger clouds of cooler gas and dust glow brightly.
Some of the stars seen in this image from the surrounding galaxy are red supergiants—stars with
low surface temperatures that are very large, hundreds of times the diameter of our Sun.
How stars are born and how they interact with their environments are two big questions in
astronomy today that are actively being studied with the Webb telescope. In this new image,
Webb is showing us parts of the story of star formation that we could never
see before, revealing more about the universe and our place in it.
"WEBB Space Telescope" ending screen.
NASA Meatball appears onscreen