Amazing James Webb Space Telescope's View Of Carina Nebula

Space.com

See amazing imagery of the Carina Nebula as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center astrophysicist Amber Straughn explains.   Credit: NASA

Transcript

00:00Okay, Amber, so here it is. Can you walk us through the final image reveal?

00:05Absolutely. Here we go.

00:10The last image is... Wow, look at that.

00:14So, Amber, can you tell us a bit about what we're seeing here?

00:17Of course. This stunning vista of the cosmic cliffs of the Carina Nebula

00:22reveals new details about this vast stellar nursery.

00:26Today, for the first time, we're seeing brand new stars

00:30that were previously completely hidden from our view.

00:33Is there something you want to point out here?

00:35Absolutely. So, honestly, it took me a while to even figure out what to call out in this image.

00:41There's just so much going on here. It's so beautiful.

00:44One thing that really, really stands out to me

00:46is you sort of get this sense of depth and texture from this new data.

00:51There's a lot going on. To call out a few specifics,

00:55first of all, in general, the Carina Nebula is a nearby star-forming region

00:59within our own Milky Way galaxy, about 7,600 light-years away.

01:03And in this view, we see some great examples,

01:07first of all, of hundreds of new stars that we've never seen before.

01:11We see examples of bubbles and cavities and jets that are being blown out by these newborn stars.

01:18We even see some galaxies sort of lurking in the background up here.

01:23We see examples of structures that, honestly, we don't even know what they are.

01:27Like, what's going on here? The data is just so rich.

01:32And there's something really special about the infrared.

01:34Infrared can actually see deeper into these star-forming regions?

01:37Absolutely. That's one of the great things about infrared,

01:39is it really does reveal what's going on here in a really cosmic sense.

01:45And in general, what's happening in sort of this overall landscape

01:48is we have these gigantic, hot, young stars up here to the top of this rim.

01:54And the radiation and stellar winds from those stars is sort of pushing down

01:59and running into all of this. This is gas and dust.

02:03And of course, we know that gas and dust is great raw material for newborn stars and baby planets.

02:10But there's a flip side to this story, and also a little bit of a mystery,

02:15because these same processes can serve to sort of erode away this material and stop star formation.

02:22So we have this sort of delicate balance going on of new stars being formed.

02:26But at the same time, the star formation is being halted.

02:30And for me, when I see an image like this, I can't help but think about scale.

02:34You know, every dot of light we see here is an individual star, not unlike our sun.

02:41And many of these likely also have planets.

02:44And it just reminds me that, you know, our sun and our planets and ultimately us

02:49were formed out of the same kind of stuff that we see here.

02:53We humans really are connected to the universe.

02:56We're made of the same stuff in this beautiful landscape.

03:00And actually, the Carina Nebula was one of my favorite images from Hubble.

03:03So Hubble looked at this as well, right?

03:04Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. The Hubble image of this is also spectacular.

03:09We saw it in a different kind of light when Hubble took an image of this particular nebula.

03:15And then you can see amazing things with Hubble.

03:18But when we zoom in to this new image, we're able to see so much more detail.

03:23And of course, all of us, you know, I grew up on Hubble and all of us love Hubble.

03:29And I'm just I'm so excited to see what these two amazing observatories are able to do really in tandem with each other.

03:36Thank you so much. And again, congratulations.

03:38It's been a pleasure to be working on this with you.

03:40I'm just amazed by what's been going on. Thank you.

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