According to images released by NASA on Tuesday, thousands of young stars were found in the Tarantula Nebula, one of the most active star-forming regions in the universe.
There is a huge cloud of gas and dust about 160,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud. Some stars that are more than 150 times the mass of our sun have been created by the nebula.
Astronomers trained three of the high-resolution telescopes on it to find out more about the birthplace. The $10 billion dollar telescope is able to cut through the gas and dust of the universe by using the heat of the sun to illuminate it.
According to NASA, the strands of gas that look like spider webs in the new image are lined with silk.
There are fuzzy white dots in the background of the picture. There is a large group of young stars in the center of the picture. The space around the young stars is where gas has been cleared out by the stars.
Astronomers looked at the same region in the same wavelength. The hot stars fade and the cooler gas and dust glow in the above image. According to the NASA, tiny points of light are not fully formed stars, but are still in the process of forming.
The emerging star was caught using the Near-Infrared Spectrograph. The pillars of gas and dust surrounding the stars blocks the light from entering.
The Tarantula Nebula is thought to belong to our universe's past. It has the same chemical composition as the star-forming regions seen at " Cosmic noon", when the universe was a few billion years old. The nebula is still making stars.
Since their understanding of how stars formed in the past still has gaps, researchers hope that the observations made by Webb will help them understand how stars formed in the past.
The Space Telescope Science Institute said in a statement that "Webb will provide the opportunity to compare and contrast observations of star formation in the Tarantula Nebula with the telescope's deep observations of distant galaxies."
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