July 7, 2024

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The telescope captures a discharge of compatible starbursts  Techno Doctor |  magazine

The telescope captures a discharge of compatible starbursts Techno Doctor | magazine

For the first time, the James Webb Space Telescope’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam) has captured a shower of stellar flares lined up in the Serpent Nebula.

These phenomena form when jets of gas emerging from newborn stars collide with nearby gas and dust at high speed. These objects usually have different orientations within the same area. However, here they are all tilted in the same direction and to the same degree, like frost that falls during a storm, he explains. European press.

The discovery of these aligned objects provides information about the foundations of star birth, reports the European Space Agency, which runs GEMS Webb in cooperation with NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).

When a cloud of interstellar gas collapses in on itself to form a star, it spins more rapidly. The only way for the gas to continue moving inward is to remove some of the spin (known as angular momentum). A disk of material forms around the young star to transport material downward, like a vortex around a drain. Rotating magnetic fields in the inner disk cause some of the material to be released in twin jets that shoot outward in opposite directions, perpendicular to the disk of material.

In a web image, these jets are identified by thick, bright red lines, which are shock waves that occur when the jets collide with the gas and dust surrounding them. Here, red indicates the presence of molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide. Webb can image these very young stars and their jets, which were previously obscured at optical wavelengths.

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Astronomers say there are some forces that likely change the direction of the outflows during this period of the young star’s life. One way is for binary stars to orbit around each other and wobble in their direction, causing the outflows to rotate in direction over time.

The Serpent Nebula is only one or two million years old, which is very young in cosmological terms. It also hosts a particularly dense cluster of recently formed stars (about 100,000 years old) at the center of this image, some of which will eventually grow to the mass of our Sun.

The Serpent is a reflection nebula, meaning it is a cloud of gas and dust that does not create its own light, but instead glows by reflecting light from nearby stars or within the nebula. (Yo)