Photo of the Day: James Webb Space Telescope captures the birth of a new star

Ivan Zubov

A few days ago, Novye Izvestia already published photographs taken by the American space agency NASA from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) - the most powerful, advanced and expensive of all ever operating in orbit. Using a system of lenses, filters and prisms to detect infrared signals invisible to the human eye, the telescope is able to see into the depths of the universe that until recently seemed impossible. Now NASA is releasing new, even more incredible photos.

This time it's not the origin of creation, 13 billion light-years away, but the edge of a nearby (only 7,000 light-years) young star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. As another confirmation of the biblical truth that everything is born from dirt (in this case, from interstellar dust and gases), technical expert Vadim Lukashevich writes in his blog.

This image is called "Space Rocks" because it looks like rocky mountains on a moonlit evening. This is actually the edge of a giant gas cavity inside NGC 3324, and the highest "peaks" in this image are about 7 light-years high. The cavernous region has been carved out of the nebula by intense ultraviolet radiation and stellar winds from extremely massive, hot young stars located at the center of the bubble just off the top edge of the image.

Intense ultraviolet radiation from young stars forms a wall of the nebula, slowly breaking it down. Dramatic columns rise above the luminous wall of gas, resisting this radiation. The "steam" that appears to be rising from the heavenly "mountains" is actually hot ionized gas and hot dust escaping from the nebula due to the relentless radiation.

In addition to aesthetic pleasure for those who are ignorant of astronomy, this image is valuable and unique for specialists in that for the first time it was possible to capture the earliest period of star formation - the first 50-100 thousand years. During this initial, "prenatal" period, the stars are still too dim to be seen with a "normal" telescope. But James Webb, who hid from the Sun in the shadow of the Earth and cooled there for half a year to almost absolute zero, “sees” in the infrared spectrum, so he succeeded. So that you understand his capabilities - he will see a lit match on the surface of the moon (if it could be lit there).

The description of the image is on the NASA website, and you can download this miracle in its original size (14575 x 8441 pixels), for example, as wallpaper for your computer desktop, here .