NASA’s Webb Space Telescope Pierces Star Forming ‘Cosmic Cliffs’
NASA’S new Webb Space Telescope continues opening vistas onto heretofore hidden astrophysics. This time it’s a nearby star forming region where stars that will evolve to be not unlike our own are currently in the birthing process.
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NASA’s Webb Space Telescope has used its extraordinary infrared imaging capability to reveal heretofore unseen star formation in the nearby so-called ‘Cosmic Cliffs,’ part of NGC 3324, a star forming region located some 7200 light years away in the Carina Nebula.
Webb has peered into a star-forming nursery not unlike the one we think gave birth to the Sun and Solar System, Megan Reiter, an astronomer at Houston’s Rice University and the study lead, told me. The Cosmic Cliffs are the dust and molecular gas edge of the star-forming cloud that gave birth to the NGC 3324 cluster, she says.
These infrared images let us see the warm glow of young stars still buried in their natal cocoons and dozens of the molecular hydrogen outflows that they drive during the brief period of their active accretion, says Reiter. These observations reveal 24 molecular outflows from very young stars that are still in the process of putting themselves together, she says.
