A bigger mystery than JUMBO? The Orion Nebula is full of ‘dark shadows’
Typical dark shadows. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson.
It wasn’t that long ago that we at OSLU were drooling over the wondrous planetary-sized JUMBO objects that, in pairs, fill parts of the iconic Orion Nebula. They are seductive and it is hard not to see some very advanced technology in them. Theories about the origin and development of planets do not know how to deal with them.
Mark McCaughrean. Kredit: M. McCaughrean.
But it seems that even this is not enough for the Orion Nebula. Observations by the Webb Telescope have yielded other, perhaps even greater, mysteries than JUMBO. These are “dark shadows,” which Mark McCaughrean and Samuel Pearson of ESA Research call “mysterious dark absorbers.“
Observations of the Orion Nebula by the Webb Telescope yielded many images, taken through various filters. As McCaughrean and Pearson cheered over them, they noticed something odd about the images through the F115W filter, which shows the universe in radiation with a wavelength of about 1.16 microns, i.e. in the near-infrared region.
Dark shadows in protoplanetary jets of matter. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA / Science leads and image processing: M. McCaughrean, S. Pearson.
At first it looked like coffee stains of various shapes. Then it turned out that these shadows appear around a whole range of objects, but always only in images with the specified filter. Not on any other wavelength. No one has seen anything like this yet, with any device of the necessary performance.
McCaughrean and Pearson first thought it might be dust, which is a common sight in the Orion Nebula. However, such dust would have to be visible even on pictures of the same place with a different filter. Obviously, it must be something that the Orion Nebula contains in significant amounts, and which is also only visible in a very narrow region of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Helium is the main suspect at the moment, although some other surprises cannot be ruled out. It is the second most common element in the universe and accounts for about a quarter of the common mass of the universe. McCaughrean thinks it’s cool neutral helium absorbing the nebula’s background radiation. Sometimes protoplanetary jets are also visible in these places.
Although the dark shadows are not as “sci-fi” as the JUMBO objects at first glance, they are perhaps even more exciting for McCaughrean. If it is a really neutral material that absorbs radiation and is contained in protoplanetary jets, this could, for example, make it possible for the first time to directly determine the mass of these jets. Astronomers have a lot to look forward to.
Video: EVE Fanfest 2023 – Mark McCaughrean: The James Webb Space Telescope:from first light to new planets
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2023-10-22 02:53:15
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