James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:
It’s heaven in my heart, and we could find you some *space* ✨
Webb looked at nearly 9000 star clusters in four different nearby galaxies and its data shows that more massive star clusters emerge more quickly from the clouds they are born in. Learning about star formation helps us understand galactic evolution, the dynamics within a galaxy, as well as how and where planets form.
This near-infrared image shows a section of one of the spiral arms of Messier 51 (M51), one of the four galaxies in this study. Thick star-forming gas is shown here in red and orange. Within these gas complexes, each tens to hundreds of light years across, Webb reveals the dense, extremely bright clusters of massive stars that have just recently formed. The countless stars strewn across the arm of the galaxy, many of which would be invisible to our eyes behind layers of dust, are also laid bare in infrared light.
All the star clusters observed as a part of this study were at different evolutionary stages: young clusters just starting to emerge from their natal clouds of gas, clusters that had partially dispersed the gas (both from Webb images), and fully unobstructed clusters visible in optical light (found in Hubble images). With Webb’s ability to peer inside the gas clouds, scientists were able to then estimate the mass and age of each cluster. The most massive clusters had fully emerged and dispersed the clouds of gas after around five million years, while less massive clusters were between seven and eight million years old when they emerged from their nurseries. This finding impacts theories on planet formation. When gas is cleared away quickly within a star cluster, protoplanetary disks around stars are exposed to harsh ultraviolet radiation from stars sooner. This reduces the amount of gas from the nebula they can pull in, and gives them fewer opportunities to grow dust and create planets.
Read more: esawebb.org/news/weic2608/
Credit: ESA/Webb, NASA & CSA, A. Pedrini, A. Adamo (Stockholm University) and the FEAST JWST team
Image description: A large, long portion of one of the spiral arms in galaxy M51. Red-orange, clumpy filaments of gas and dust that stretch in a chain from left to right comprise the arm. Shining cyan bubbles light up parts of the gas clouds from within, and gaps expose bright star clusters in these bubbles as glowing white dots. The whole image is dotted with small stars. A faint blue glow around the arm colors the otherwise dark background.
