NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) caught a "Cosmic Tarantula"
NASA's Webb has captured a beautiful image of the 30 Doradus nebula. 30 Doradus is also called the Tarantula Nebula because of its dusty filaments.
The Tarantula Nebula is one of the largest and brightest star-forming regions in our Milky Way's nearest galaxies. It is home to the hottest, most massive stars known.
Only 161,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud galaxy, the Tarantula Nebula is the largest and brightest star-forming region in the Local Group.
In addition to young stars and distant background galaxies, James Webb also reveals the detailed composition of the Tarantula Nebula's gas and dust.
Here's another view of the Tarantula Nebula, this time captured by Webb's Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI).
MIRI looks at longer wavelengths of light, revealing a previously unseen cosmic atmosphere.
Astronomers focused Webb's three high-resolution infrared instruments on Tarantula. The center of the image is taken by Webb's Near-Infrared Camera Instrument (NIRCAM).
Points of light within this image indicate embedded protostars that are still gaining mass. The dust grains in the nebula absorb or scatter short wavelengths of light.
The powerful stellar winds of stars destroy all but the densest surrounding regions of the nebulae, creating pillars that point towards the cluster.
Webb's Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) observed a very young star doing this, which was just beginning to emerge from its pillar and still maintained an insulating cloud of dust around it.
The Tarantula Nebula has been a favorite target of stellar nurseries astronomers studying star formation, and this image by James Webb reveals it in excellent detail.
Without Webb's high-resolution spectra at infrared wavelengths, this episode of star formation-in-action could not have been uncovered.