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The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured an image that shows red glowing gas and dust rising from the center of a starburst galaxy known as the Cigar Galaxy.
The Cigar Galaxy is also known as Messier 82 (M82). At its core lies a dense but turbulent atmosphere that can provide scientists with the clearest picture of how stars are born collectively.
A team of scientists led by Alberto Bolato imaged the core of this starburst galaxy with JWST’s near-infrared camera (NIRCam) to understand what conditions drive the formation of baby stars.
Detailed inspection of the new web image reveals that this red glowing dust is associated with hot plasma.
“M82 has received a wide variety of observations over the years because it can be considered a prototypical starburst galaxy,” team leader and University of Maryland researcher Alberto Bolato said in a statement. Both the Spitzer and Hubble space telescopes have observed this target. ,
“With JWST’s size and resolution, we can look at this star-forming galaxy and see all this beautiful new detail,” he said.
This starburst galaxy may have been agitated by the recent passing of its neighbor, the larger spiral galaxy M81, but this does not explain the source of the outwardly diffuse gas and dust causing the red glow.
Evidence suggests that this material is being ejected by the combined emerging particle winds of multiple stars, which together are forming a galactic superwind.
“This image demonstrates the power of JWST,” team member and University of Arizona scientist Rebecca Levy said in the statement.
“Every single white dot in this image is either a star or a star cluster. “We can start to isolate all these little point sources, which will enable us to get a precise count of all the star clusters in this galaxy,” she said.
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Published: April 15, 2024, 03:46 PM IST
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