Roll out the red carpet! The stars are here :

⁣Star-forming region NGC 604 contains more than 200 of the hottest, most massive kinds of stars (B-type and O-type stars), all in the early stages of their lives. There is no region quite like this within our own Milky Way, making NGC 604 a perfect window for astronomers to study young, massive stars.⁣

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The @NASAWebb Telescope has captured two different views of the region. The first image was taken in near-infrared light. It shows tendrils and clumps of bright red emission, extending out from large bubbles. Stellar winds from those bright, hot young stars have carved out these cavities.⁣

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In the second image, mid-infrared light reveals large clouds of cooler dust and gas glowing bright. Fewer stars are visible, as hot stars emit less light at these wavelengths. Some of the stars that can still be seen are red supergiants: stars that are cool but very large, hundreds of times the diameter of our Sun.⁣

Image descriptions:⁣

1. At the center of the image is a nebula on the black background of space. The nebula is comprised of clumpy, red, filamentary clouds. At the center-right of the red clouds is a large cavernous bubble, and at the center of the bubble there is an opaque blueish glow with speckles of stars. At the edges of the bubble, the dust is white. There are several other smaller cavernous bubbles at the top of the nebula. There are thousands of stars that fill the surrounding area outside of the nebula, most of them are yellow or white – at 11 o’clock and 6 o’clock there are extremely bright stars with eight diffraction spikes. There are also some smaller, red stars and a few disc-shaped galaxies scattered about the image.⁣

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2. At the center of the image is a nebula on the black background of space. The nebula is comprised of wispy filaments of light blue clouds. At the center-right of the blue clouds is a large cavernous bubble. The bottom left edge of this cavernous bubble is filled with hues of pink and white gas. There are hundreds of dim stars that fill the surrounding area of the nebula.⁣

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Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI⁣

#NASA #JWST #Stars #Infrared #Space #Telescope #SXSW #SXSW24

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10 March 2024