The latest image from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured "thousands of never-before-seen stars" in a prominent nebula, according to NASA.
The space agency today released a picture taken by the space telescope of the Tarantula Nebula, which resides about 160,000 light years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud satellite galaxy.
Over the decades, astronomers have snapped plenty of pictures of the Tarantula Nebula, which resembles a spider’s web. However, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was able to capture a more detailed view of the cosmic sight.
The space telescope has been observing the cloud to help astronomers better understand early star formation that occurs in the Tarantula Nebula. The result is a mosaic image of the nebula that's almost 125MB when downloaded at its original size. If you do, you’ll be able to zoom in on the image and see thousands of stars lurking inside the cosmic cloud.
The mosaic image covers an area of 340 light years across the Tarantula nebula. By using its powerful infrared sensors, the James Webb Telescope was able to image “tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust,” according to the European Space Agency.
“The most active region appears to sparkle with massive young stars, appearing pale blue,” the ESA said. To the upper left of them is a bright yellow, but older star.
Meanwhile, the red-colored stars in the image are still surrounded by gas from the nebula. The rest of the web-like pillars across the stellar nursery are forming protostars, which are still gaining mass, but will one day also emerge. To view these regions, the James Webb Space Telescope took images of the nebula using its mid-infrared sensors
"In this light, the young hot stars of the cluster fade in brilliance, and glowing gas and dust come forward," NASA said. "Much of the nebula takes on a more ghostly, diffuse appearance because mid-infrared light is able to show more of what is happening deeper inside the clouds."
Astronomers have been interested in the Tarantula Nebula because its chemical composition has similar conditions to when the universe was only a few billion years old and when star formation was at its peak.
NASA added: “Despite humanity’s thousands of years of stargazing, the star-formation process still holds many mysteries—many of them due to our previous inability to get crisp images of what was happening behind the thick clouds of stellar nurseries. Webb has already begun revealing a universe never seen before, and is only getting started on rewriting the stellar creation story.”