Beautiful star formation region “N79” captured by the James Webb Space Telescope | sorae universe portal website

This is an image capturing part of the HII region “N79” in the direction of the constellation Pisces. N79 is located about 163,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC), a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way.

The HII region is also called a star-forming region because it is the location where new stars form from gas and dust, and is sometimes described as the “cradle of stars.” When observed under visible light, it appears red or pink due to light emitted by hydrogen gas ionized by ultraviolet radiation from young, massive stars.

This image was created based on data acquired by the Mid-Range Infrared Observatory (MIRI) on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). According to the European Space Agency (ESA), this image shows a region centered southward around N79, one of three molecular cloud complexes that make up N79. Since the Webb Space Telescope primarily observes infrared wavelengths that the human eye cannot detect, the colors of published images are colored according to the filter used when they were acquired.

Molecular clouds that contain not only gas but also dust have a high density that blocks visible light, but the infrared light captured by the Webb Space Telescope is less likely to be blocked by dust, making it possible to explore what's inside. A young, slightly bright star shines above The center of the image, producing a needle-like beam of light.(※)I feel a mysterious beauty in the way it accompanies it. In addition to this bright star, the image also shows several bright spots in the molecular cloud.

The star-forming regions in the Large Magellanic Cloud have a different chemical composition than the star-forming regions in the Milky Way, and are thought to be similar to the star-forming regions that existed when star formation in the universe reached its peak (about 10 billion years ago). They are said to attract the attention of researchers because Being so According to the European Space Agency, the Webb Space Telescope now provides researchers with the opportunity to observe star formation in N79 and take detailed observations of galaxies in the early universe. The first image was published by the European Space Agency on January 23, 2024.

*This light is called the diffraction height and is created by the structure of the telescope. For example, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) has a cross-shaped diffraction spike, while the Webb Space Telescope has hexagonal mirror segments that form the primary mirror and three that support the secondary mirror, and has a unique shape that combines diffraction spikes caused by book supports.

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Text Editing/Syrian Studies Department