Observing these “protostars” in the process of formation allows researchers to know if the star formation process in the SMC is different from what we observe in our own Milky Way.
The James Webb Space Telescope is investigating one of the most dynamic star-forming regions of nearby galaxies, the so-called NGC 346, close to our Milky Way, in which they have detected significant amounts of dust, something not expected by astronomers, its website reported on Wednesday.
NCG 346 is located in the Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a “dwarf galaxy” close to the Milky Way that contains lower concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen or helium called metals.
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Since dust grains in space are mostly made of “metals,” scientists expected to find only small amounts of dust and that it would be difficult to detect; but “new data” from the Webb telescope “reveals just the opposite.”
The astronomers explored this region because “the conditions and amount of metals within the SMC resemble those observed in galaxies billions of years ago,” during an era in the history of the Universe known as “cosmic noon,” when the star formation was in full swing.
Some 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang, he explains, galaxies were forming stars at a dizzying rate, and “the fireworks of star formation that occurred then still shape the galaxies we see around us today.”
“Even if NGC 346 is now the only massive star-forming cluster in its galaxy, it offers us a great opportunity to investigate the conditions that existed at ‘cosmic noon,'” said Margaret Meixner, astronomer and principal investigator on the team of scientists.
Observing these “protostars” in the process of formation allows researchers to know if the star formation process in the SMC is different from what we observe in our own Milky Way.
As stars form, they “accumulate gas and dust that can look like ribbons in the pictures de Webb”, of the surrounding molecular cloud.
Astronomers have detected gas around protostars within NGC 346, but Webb’s near-infrared observations mark the first time they have detected dust in these disks as well.
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“With Webb, we can investigate lighter weight protostars, as small as a tenth of our Sun” and find out if their formation process “is affected by the lower metal content,” said Olivia Jones, for her part. from the UK Center for Astronomy Technology.
For Guido De Marchi, of the European Space Agency (ESA), “we are seeing the basic components not only of stars, but also potentially of planets.”
Webb is the largest and most powerful telescope ever launched into space, under an international collaboration agreement between ESA, NASA and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA).
