For its 17th anniversary, the Hubble telescope presented an image of the Carina Nebula. By then, we could not examine with such clarity what was happening there until the James Webb telescope changed the game. With it, we are facing an era in which humanity will be able to observe incredible images of space, one of them of this fascinating nebula.
With an out-of-the-ordinary image, the ‘James Webb’ presented a new high-resolution picture of the Carina nebula, the place where a lot of stellar births and deaths take place. Thousands of bright flashes mark the birth of new stars, literally a fantasy landscape.
Carina Nebula and the Cosmic Cliffs
What the James Webb telescope captured for mankind is the edge of the giant gas cavity within NGC 3324, i.e., the cosmic cliffs or cosmic valleys. The image is about 7 light-years high, the intense ultraviolet radiation has created a cavernous area in the nebula, as well as given life to young, hot stars.
It is exactly these stars and their radiation that have shaped the Carina nebula. A slow erosion occurs creating dramatic pillar landscapes. What is seen as vapor is actually hot ionized gas and hot dust that is blown out of the nebula by the intense radiation at its center.
Thanks to the unrelenting sensitivity of the James Webb Telescope, cosmic dust is observed across the objects, as well as protostellar jets shooting out from some of the emerging stars.
What does the nebula reveal?
As astronomers and scientists observe the nebula, they will be able to study the process of star formation. That is, it will reveal how stars are born, how it propagates over time or even how the development of this nebula works.
In reality, the balance of star formation in the Carina nebula is very delicate. The increase in pressure at the edge could cause the material to collapse and then new stars would be born, but such a perturbation could also prevent star formation.
The incredible lights of Carina are thought to have started about three million years ago, all when the first generation of stars born from the nebula condensed. Just as this happened, a huge cloud of cold molecular hydrogen ignited, creating a bubble of hot, expanding gas. However, questions are just being created.
So far the ‘James Webb’ has given a first glimpse, there is very little data. But hope is growing, as we already have major breakthroughs at least in the observation of these cosmic events.
This could be the beginning of the analysis of a nest of stars, this is where the sparkles of the universe emerge, or at least some of them, and it is fantastic to look at them and recognize that we are composed of these remnants and elements.
Story originally published by Ecoosfera in Spanish.
