NASA reveals how stars form – ‘Image’ from the James Webb Telescope

One of the greatest mysteries of Space is the regions where stars are formed, “born”. The “wombs” of the Universe, as they are called by scientists, they are considered the most important regions, since that is where, in essence, any form of life begins in the vast Space.

NASA’s James Webb Telescope provides answers to many of the questions scientists have about these regions, which, however, still well hide their properties.

NGC 346 is one of the most dynamic star-forming regions in nearby galaxies. It is at Small Magellanic Cloud (SMC), a dwarf galaxy near the Milky Way, the galaxy our Earth is part of. The SMC contains lower concentrations of elements heavier than hydrogen or helium, which astronomers call metals, compared to the Milky Way. Since dust grains in space are mostly made of metals, scientists expected that there would be small amounts of dust and that it would be difficult to detect. New evidence from Webb reveals just the opposite.

Astronomers investigated this region because the conditions and amount of metals within the SMC resemble those seen in galaxies billions of years ago, during an era in the universe known as the “cosmic noon,” when star formation was at its peak of. About 2 to 3 billion years after the Big Bang, galaxies were forming stars at a furious rate. A similar process is happening even now.

The NGC 346 region:

“A galaxy during cosmic noon would not have an NGC 346 like the Small Magellanic Cloud. It would have thousands of star-forming regions like this,” she said Margaret Meixner, an astronomer at the University Space Research Association and principal investigator of the research team. “Even if NGC 346 is the one and only massive star-forming cluster in its galaxy, it offers us a great opportunity to probe the conditions that existed at the cosmic noon.”

By observing protostars that are still in the process of forming, researchers can learn whether the star formation process in the SMC is different from what we see in our own Galaxy. Previous infrared studies of NGC 346 have focused on protostars heavier than about 5 to 8 times the mass of our Sun. “With Webb, we can probe lighter protostars, as small as one-tenth the size of our Sun, to see if their formation process is affected by the lower metal content,” said Olivia Jones of the UK’s Royal Astronomy Technology Center and co-investigator of the program.

As stars form, they gather gas and dust, which can look like ribbons in Webb’s images, from the surrounding molecular cloud. Material is collected in an accretion disk that feeds the central protostar. Astronomers have detected gas around protostars within NGC 346, but Webb’s near-infrared observations mark the first time dust has been detected in these disks.

“We’re seeing the building blocks, not just of stars, but possibly of planets,” said Dr Guido De Marchi of the European Space Agency, a co-investigator on the research team. “And because the Small Magellanic Cloud has a similar environment to galaxies during cosmic noon, it’s possible that rocky planets could have formed earlier in the universe than we thought.”

The team also has spectroscopic observations from the instrument Webb’s NIRSpec, which he continues to analyze. These data are expected to provide new insights into the material accreting onto individual protostars, as well as the environment immediately surrounding the protostar.

These results were presented on January 11 at a press conference at the 241st meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

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