Thousands of never-before-seen young stars gather in a stellar nursery called 30 Doradus. Nicknamed the Tarantula Nebula Imaged by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The nebula has long been a favorite of astronomers who study star formation. In addition young stars, Webb reveals the detailed structure and composition of the nebula’s gas and dust, as well as distant background galaxies.

Located just 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, the Tarantula Nebula largest and brightest star formation It is home to the hottest and most massive stars known of the Local Group, the closest galaxies to our Milky Way. Astronomers focused three of the Webb Telescope’s high-resolution infrared instruments on the Tarantula.

The region viewed by Webb’s Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) hollow tarantula, its covered with silk. The void of the nebula centered in the NIRCam image is carved by radiation from a cluster of massive young stars glowing pale blue in the image. Only the denser surrounding areas of the nebula resist erosion caused by strong stellar winds from these stars, forming columns that appear to point to the cluster.

These columns contain protostars in formation, eventually it will emerge from its dusty cocoon and take its turn to form the nebula.

Webb’s Near Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) caught a very young star doing just that. Astronomers previously thought this star might be a little older, and already clear a balloon around.

However, NIRSpec indicates that the star just starting to appear snapped from its mast and still held a cloud of insulating dust around it. This section would not have been revealed without Webb’s high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths, NASA reported.

region takes a different view When viewed at the longest infrared wavelengths detected by Webb. Hot stars are fading and cooler gas and dust are shining. Points of light within stellar birth clouds indicate buried protostars that are still gaining mass.

While the lengths shorter light waves they are absorbed or scattered by dust particles in the nebula and therefore never reach Webb for detection; longer mid-infrared wavelengths penetrate this dust. Thus, they finally reveal a cosmic environment that has never been seen before.

Is it because it matters?

one of the reasons tarantula nebula What’s interesting to astronomers is that it has a kind of chemical composition similar to the massive star forming regions seen at “cosmic noon” when the cosmos is only a few billion years old and star formation is at its peak.

regions star formation they do not produce stars at the same dizzying speed as the Tarantula Nebula in our galaxy, the Milky Way, and have a different composition. This makes the Tarantula imaged by the Webb Telescope the closest example of what is happening in the universe at noon.