A new image produced by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) sheds light on how early stars formed during a “cosmic noon,” more than 10 billion years ago.
NASA is using the James Webb Space Telescope to look at one of the Milky Way’s closest neighbors.
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About 200,000 light-years from Earth, the Small Magellanic Cloud, a dwarf galaxy close to the Milky Way, lacks minerals heavier than hydrogen and helium.
The levels of these metals in the galaxy reflect a unique close environment for studying the shape of galaxies during the early history of the universe, when they were only 2 to 3 billion years old and star formation was at its peak.
Although various telescope missions have studied the Small Magellanic Cloud in the past, much remains to be understood. Now, thanks to high-resolution imaging by James Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam), astronomers have detected more than 33,000 young stars embedded in the NGC 346 nebula, the brightest and largest star-forming region in the galaxy.
Metal levels in the galaxy indicate that this was what the universe was like in its early history, when stars were being born in all directions.
Using the James Webb Telescope’s infrared camera, astronomers have found “ribbons of gas and dust” within the galaxy.
Scientists believe this is early evidence that although the galaxy is low in metals, it is dusty – and thus has the building blocks for forming rocky planetary systems.
Some young, high-mass stars, known to astronomers as young stellar objects (YSOs), have formed over the past million years.
Astronomers will monitor these young stars to find out how the oldest stars in the universe were born.
“We were very excited to see dust around these things,” said Margaret Mixner, an astronomer with the Universities Space Research Association and one of the study’s authors. We’ve just scratched the surface of this data.” However, scientists still have a long way to go.
It is not known if there is enough dust that survived the star formation process to help form rocky planetary systems in a “metal-poor” galaxy.
Source: The Sun
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