Astronomers Eager to Study New James Webb Telescope Image Revealing Orion Nebula | CBC News

More than 1,300 light-years from Earth lies a stunning region of dust and gas called the Orion Nebula. On Monday, a team of astronomers from around the world released the most detailed image ever taken by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) of this prolific star-forming region.

Els Peeters, an astronomer and professor at Western University in London, Ontario, who is one of the principal investigators for the JWST observing program known as PDRs4AlI, said she was amazed by the image.

“It’s just the amazing detail, how sharp the images are, all that threadlike structure,” she told CBC News.

The composite image – which used multiple filters – was captured with JWST’s NIRCam instrument. It features what appears to be a windswept region of blue gas, a bright star blazing gas around it, and, most notably, an area of ​​dense dust and gas known as the Orion Bar. Most interesting, however, are the filaments, globules, and young stars.

While the region — just a small portion of the larger Orion Nebula, which is one of the closest star-forming regions — has been studied with other telescopes, most notably the Hubble Space Telescope, JWST sees in infrared light, which can also see optical light peeking through thick dust and reveals what the human eye cannot see that is hidden.

That’s what interests Peeters the most. Her team has been studying the region since 2017 and is eagerly awaiting the new look. Previously, her team had used NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, which can also see in the infrared — but not nearly as high as the JWST.

But this is more than just a pretty picture. It’s part of a study examining how stars and planets form, and shedding more light on the formation of our own solar system and planets. It looks to our origin.

“We have never been able to see the intricate fine details of the structure of interstellar matter in these environments and figure out how planetary systems can form in the presence of this harsh radiation,” said Emilie Habart, associate professor at the Institut d’ Astrophysique Spatiale in Paris , it said in a statement.

Meanwhile, Peeters said that massive, young stars — and even those already in star-forming regions — are emitting intense ultraviolet radiation in the surrounding clouds. This can change not only the shape of the cloud, but also its chemical composition. She and her team want to understand how this works and how it could influence the further formation of stars and planets.

Some interesting finds in this image are also protostars, stars that are just beginning to form.

“You can see in Orion a luminous stellar nursery, many young stars there. we [also] see some protostars in this image. And so, over time, planets will form in some of these disks,” Peeters said, but added, “Probably not in our lifetimes.”

This understanding of how gases and radiation play such an essential role in star formation does not end with this new image. The teams are still waiting for spectroscopic data that will reveal the specific chemical elements contained in and around the region.

“If you want to understand star formation in the universe and your planet formation, you have to understand the basics,” Peeters said. “And so the Orion Bar is a kind of laboratory: you go there, find out what’s going on, and then apply it to other areas.”

And it’s also part of answering the big questions, she said.

“Where do we come from? Are we alone?” She said. “I think in that sense, understanding star formation and planet formation is part of this puzzle.”