NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured thousands of never-before-seen young stars in the Tarantula Nebula, a stellar nursery called 30 Doradus.
The young stars were previously shrouded from view by cosmic dust.
Astronomers are using two of Webb’s spectrographs to take a closer look at this region and determine the chemical makeup of a prominent older star and its surrounding gas.
The Webb telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera, also called NIRCam, has helped researchers see the region “in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust,” according to NASA.
“Astronomers previously thought this star might be a bit older and already in the process of clearing out a bubble around itself,” according to NASA. “However, NIRSpec showed that the star was only just beginning to emerge from its pillar and still maintained an insulating cloud of dust around itself….