See amazing imagery of the Carina Nebula as captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA Goddard Space Flight Center astrophysicist Amber Straughn explains.
Credit: NASA
Credit: NASA
Category
🤖
TechTranscript
00:00 Okay, Amber, so here it is.
00:02 Can you walk us through the final image reveal?
00:04 - Absolutely, here we go.
00:07 - The last image is, wow, look at that.
00:13 So Amber, can you tell us a bit
00:16 about what we're seeing here?
00:16 - Of course, this stunning vista
00:19 of the cosmic cliffs of the Carina Nebula
00:22 reveals new details about this vast stellar nursery.
00:26 Today, for the first time, we're seeing brand new stars
00:30 that were previously completely hidden from our view.
00:33 - Is there something you wanna point out here?
00:34 - Absolutely, so honestly, it took me a while
00:38 to even figure out what to call out in this image.
00:41 There's just so much going on here, it's so beautiful.
00:44 One thing that really stands out to me
00:46 is you sort of get this sense of depth
00:48 and texture from this new data.
00:51 There's a lot going on.
00:53 To call out a few specifics, first of all, in general,
00:56 the Carina Nebula is a nearby star-forming region
00:59 within our own Milky Way galaxy,
01:01 about 7,600 light years away.
01:03 And in this view, we see some great examples,
01:07 first of all, of hundreds of new stars
01:09 that we've never seen before.
01:11 We see examples of bubbles and cavities
01:14 and jets that are being blown out by these newborn stars.
01:18 We even see some galaxies
01:20 sort of lurking in the background up here.
01:23 We see examples of structures that, honestly,
01:25 we don't even know what they are.
01:27 Like, what's going on here?
01:29 The data is just so rich.
01:32 - And there's something really special about the infrared.
01:34 Infrared can actually see deeper
01:35 into these star-forming regions?
01:37 - Absolutely, that's one of the great things about infrared
01:39 is it really does reveal what's going on here
01:42 in a really cosmic sense.
01:44 And in general, what's happening
01:46 in sort of this overall landscape
01:48 is we have these gigantic, hot, young stars up here
01:52 to the top of this rim,
01:54 and the radiation and stellar winds from those stars
01:57 is sort of pushing down and running into all of this.
02:01 This is gas and dust,
02:03 and of course, we know that gas and dust
02:05 is great raw material for newborn stars and baby planets.
02:10 But there's a flip side to this story
02:12 and also a little bit of a mystery,
02:14 because these same processes can serve
02:17 to sort of erode away this material
02:19 and stop star formation.
02:21 So we have this sort of delicate balance going on
02:24 of new stars being formed,
02:26 but at the same time, the star formation is being halted.
02:29 And for me, when I see an image like this,
02:32 I can't help but think about scale.
02:34 Every dot of light we see here is an individual star,
02:39 not unlike our sun,
02:41 and many of these likely also have planets.
02:44 And it just reminds me that our sun and our planets
02:47 and ultimately us were formed out
02:50 of the same kind of stuff that we see here.
02:53 We humans really are connected to the universe.
02:56 We're made of the same stuff in this beautiful landscape.
03:00 - And actually, the Carina Nebula
03:01 was one of my favorite images from Hubble.
03:03 So Hubble looked at this as well, right?
03:04 - Absolutely, yeah, yeah.
03:05 The Hubble image of this is also spectacular.
03:09 We saw it in a different kind of light
03:11 when Hubble took an image of this particular nebula.
03:15 And then you can see amazing things with Hubble,
03:18 but when we zoom in to this new image,
03:21 we're able to see so much more detail.
03:23 And of course, all of us, you know,
03:24 I grew up on Hubble and all of us love Hubble.
03:29 And I'm just, I'm so excited to see
03:30 what these two amazing observatories are able to do
03:34 really in tandem with each other.
03:36 - Thank you so much.
03:36 And again, congratulations.
03:38 It's been a pleasure to be working on this with you.
03:40 I'm just amazed by what's been going on.
03:42 - I am too, thank you.