NASA: James Webb Telescope reveals secrets of the Serpens Nebula

WASHINGTON: The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured a breathtaking image of the Serpens Nebula, showcasing a celestial display that sheds light on how stars form.

The image reveals aligned, elongated “protostellar outflows” emerging from swirling disks of material, indicating that clusters of young stars spin in the same direction during their formation.

Read more: NASA prepares for rare nova event in Corona Borealis

The jets are visible in the upper-left part of the image and are caused by shockwaves from outward-shooting gas jets within collapsing interstellar clouds. The phenomenon supports astronomers’ longstanding belief that stars born from collapsing gas clouds typically share a common rotational direction.

An astronomer from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explained that these structures provide a historical record of star birth, offering direct observational evidence of the star formation process.

The Serpens Nebula is relatively young, estimated to be between one to two million years old and located about 1,300 light-years away from Earth. At its center, there is a dense cluster of protostars, some less than 100,000 years old, surrounded by a reflection nebula illuminated by nearby stars.

NASA’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) on board JWST captured this vast image. It spanned an area of approximately 16 trillion miles by 11 trillion miles. The black rectangles seen in the image indicate areas where data is missing.

This gaps in data prompted the scientists to conduct additional studies using the telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) to analyse the nebula’s chemical composition.

Crab Nebula

Meanwhile, James Webb telescope’s observations of the Crab Nebula have challenged previous theories regarding its origin. The nebula is situated some 6,500 light-years away in the constellation Taurus.

The Crab Nebula formed from a supernova explosion observed on Earth in 1054 CE. JWST’s infrared instruments, MIRI and NIRCam, have offered fresh insights into the nebula’s composition and the nature of the supernova responsible for its creation.

Researchers analysed the telescope to measure the ratio of nickel to iron within the Crab Nebula. The findings suggest that while the composition of the nebula’s gas aligns somewhat with electron-capture supernova theories, it also allowed for the possibility of a low-mass iron core-collapse supernova.

JWST’ observations have meticulously mapped the distribution of dust within the Crab Nebula, unveiling a surprising finding. Unlike typical supernova remnants, dust in the Crab Nebula is concentrated in dense filaments within its outer shell rather than at its center.