The JWST has a well-earned reputation for delivering incredible images of the cosmos. From its very first image, the powerful space telescope has regularly wowed us with images of galaxies, nebulae, star clusters, and other cosmic objects. One of the telescope’s main science themes concerns the birth of stars, and in a new image, the JWST zoomed in on Pismis 24-1, a brilliant young star in the Pismis 24 cluster.
The Pismis 24 cluster an active star forming region more than 5,000 light-years away in the Lobster Nebula. Pismis 24-1 is the brightest star in the cluster, and it and the entire cluster represent one of astronomers’ best opportunities to study the birth of stars.
In the image, Pismis 24-1 appears as a single star, and for a long time, astronomers thought it was the most massive star ever found. They initially thought it was a single supergiant. Now they know that it’s a supergiant binary and another giant star separated by about 500 AU. Both of them are massive, at about 74 and 66 solar masses.
The JWST’s image of Pismis 24-1 looks like an ethereal painting of an alternate reality. In reality, the shapes and forms in the gas are carved and created by the stellar artists and their intense radiation and stellar winds. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, A. Pagan (STScI)
For a reminder of how powerful the JWST is, here’s a Hubble image of Pismis 24-1.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows Pismis 24-1, considered the core of NGC 6357, the Lobster Nebula. Image Credit: NASA, ESA and Jesœs Maz Apellÿniz (Instituto de astrofsica de Andaluca, Spain). Acknowledgement: Davide De Martin (ESA/Hubble) – Public Domain
Massive young stars like those in the Pismis 24 cluster are ferocious. They’re extremely hot and known for their powerful radiation and stellar outflows. They sculpt dreamy, ethereal shapes into the surrounding gas. The “finger” of gas that points directly at Pismis 24-1 is made of gas that has so far resisted the torrent of energy from the stars. As the power of the stars shapes the surrounding gas, it can also compress it, kicking off the formation yet more stars. There may be more nascent stars just beginning to form inside the finger.
In this image, that tall finger-like spire of hot, ionized gas that points at Pismis 24-1 is massive. It spans more than five light-years from its tip to the bottom of the image. More than 200 of our Solar Systems, all the way out to Neptune, could fit in it.
A smaller fist and index finger seem to point the way for the taller spire in this zoomed-in portion of the image. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, A. Pagan (STScI)
The JWST provides incredible detail. The zoomed-in image below shows just some of the detail in the ionized gas clouds shaped by the hot young stars in the cluster.
This zoomed-in image shows some of the detail in the billowing clouds of star-forming ionized gas. The gas is shaped by the intense young stars in its midst, whose energy can trigger the formation of more stars. Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, A. Pagan (STScI)
The JWST is an infrared telescope only, meaning that we can never see things with our eyes the way it sees it. These images begin as science images that are then manipulated and massaged to make them not only beautiful to us, but informative. In this image, cyan indicates hot or ionized hydrogen gas heated by the massive young stars in the cluster. Dust molecules similar to Earthly smoke molecules are shown in orange. Red shows cooler, denser molecular hydrogen, and the darker the red is, the denser the molecular hydrogen is. Black shows the densest gas, which emits no light. The wispy white features are dust and gas that are scattering starlight.
NASA, the ESA, and the CSA built the James Webb to tackle some of the most stubborn unanswered questions in astronomy. It’s made startling progress, and delivered some surprises along the way.
While these images are focused on some of those questions, they also show that the telescope can dazzle us with astronomical images of unprecedented depth and beauty that are accessible to everyone.