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
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00:00Okay, Amber, so here it is. Can you walk us through the final image reveal?
00:05Absolutely. Here we go.
00:10The last image is... Wow, look at that.
00:14So, Amber, can you tell us a bit about what we're seeing here?
00:17Of course. This stunning vista of the cosmic cliffs of the Carina Nebula
00:22reveals new details about this vast stellar nursery.
00:26Today, for the first time, we're seeing brand new stars
00:30that were previously completely hidden from our view.
00:33Is there something you want to point out here?
00:35Absolutely. So, honestly, it took me a while to even figure out what to call out in this image.
00:41There's just so much going on here. It's so beautiful.
00:44One thing that really, really stands out to me
00:46is you sort of get this sense of depth and texture from this new data.
00:51There's a lot going on. To call out a few specifics,
00:55first of all, in general, the Carina Nebula is a nearby star-forming region
00:59within our own Milky Way galaxy, about 7,600 light-years away.
01:03And in this view, we see some great examples,
01:07first of all, of hundreds of new stars that we've never seen before.
01:11We see examples of bubbles and cavities and jets that are being blown out by these newborn stars.
01:18We even see some galaxies sort of lurking in the background up here.
01:23We see examples of structures that, honestly, we don't even know what they are.
01:27Like, what's going on here? The data is just so rich.
01:32And there's something really special about the infrared.
01:34Infrared can actually see deeper into these star-forming regions?
01:37Absolutely. That's one of the great things about infrared,
01:39is it really does reveal what's going on here in a really cosmic sense.
01:45And in general, what's happening in sort of this overall landscape
01:48is we have these gigantic, hot, young stars up here to the top of this rim.
01:54And the radiation and stellar winds from those stars is sort of pushing down
01:59and running into all of this. This is gas and dust.
02:03And of course, we know that gas and dust is great raw material for newborn stars and baby planets.
02:10But there's a flip side to this story, and also a little bit of a mystery,
02:15because these same processes can serve to sort of erode away this material and stop star formation.
02:22So we have this sort of delicate balance going on of new stars being formed.
02:26But at the same time, the star formation is being halted.
02:30And for me, when I see an image like this, I can't help but think about scale.
02:34You know, every dot of light we see here is an individual star, not unlike our sun.
02:41And many of these likely also have planets.
02:44And it just reminds me that, you know, our sun and our planets and ultimately us
02:49were formed out of the same kind of stuff that we see here.
02:53We humans really are connected to the universe.
02:56We're made of the same stuff in this beautiful landscape.
03:00And actually, the Carina Nebula was one of my favorite images from Hubble.
03:03So Hubble looked at this as well, right?
03:04Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. The Hubble image of this is also spectacular.
03:09We saw it in a different kind of light when Hubble took an image of this particular nebula.
03:15And then you can see amazing things with Hubble.
03:18But when we zoom in to this new image, we're able to see so much more detail.
03:23And of course, all of us, you know, I grew up on Hubble and all of us love Hubble.
03:29And I'm just I'm so excited to see what these two amazing observatories are able to do really in tandem with each other.
03:36Thank you so much. And again, congratulations.
03:38It's been a pleasure to be working on this with you.
03:40I'm just amazed by what's been going on. Thank you.