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A dazzling new mental image from theJames Webb Space Telescope(JWST ) reveals about 500,000 stars , including a dense cluster of newborn giant stars , in whatNASA describesas the " uttermost cosmic environment " near the substance of the Milky Way .
The depicted object , Sagittarius C , is an active wizard - forming region about 300 light-headed - years from our galaxy ’s central supermassive black hole , know asSagittarius A * . The reddish - orange field of the image is a cluster of protostars , while the cyan area is a antecedently unobserved realm of ionized hydrogen gas containing needle - similar structures that astronomer do n’t fully understand . It ’s lit by the ultraviolet light from monumental youthful stars . The entire realm see here spans about 50 lite - years — about 10 times the distance between the sunlight and the next - close hotshot , Proxima Centauri .
The full view of the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument reveals a 50 light-years-wide portion of the Milky Way’s dense center.
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Sagittarius C is enchanting to scientist because it ’s so densely packed and tight to the galactic nucleus .
" The galactic center is the most extreme surround in ourMilky Waygalaxy , where current theories of star formation can be put to their most tight test,“Jonathan Tan , a professor of uranology at the University of Virginia ( UV ) and an advisor on the reflection , say in astatement .
Approximate outlines help to define the features in the Sagittarius C region.
Within the busy stellar cluster is a headliner with more than 30 times the Dominicus ’s heap . star like these could help astronomers tease out other riddles of the creation as a whole .
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" Webb reveals an unbelievable amount of detail , allowing us to consider star formation in this variety of environment in a style that was n’t possible previously , " said Samuel Crowe , an undergraduate student at UV and the team ’s principal police detective . He added that massive whiz are factory thatproduce heavy elementsin their atomic core , so understanding them considerably is like con the origin news report of much of the universe .
JWST took this image using its Near - Infrared Camera , which sees infrared light — normally unseeable to the human eye — as heat . With this powerful photographic camera , JWST has succeed at peering through Brobdingnagian cosmic dust clouds to reveal thefaintest galaxy in the know universe , some of theearliest fateful holes ever discoveredand countless other body structure that would be otherwise lost to the fog of space .
