Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Space
  3. News

NASA’s Webb telescope captures the majestic Tarantula Nebula

Trevor Mogg
By

The most powerful space telescope ever built is continuing to send back dazzling images of the universe from its orbit a million miles from Earth.

The James Webb Space Telescope’s latest stunner shows the Tarantula Nebula, described by NASA as “a raucous region of star birth that resides 170,000 light-years away in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small, satellite galaxy of our Milky Way.”

The Tarantula Nebula captured by the James Webb Space Telescope.
As per NASA: In this mosaic image stretching 340 light-years across, Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) displays the Tarantula Nebula star-forming region in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust. The most active region appears to sparkle with massive young stars, appearing pale blue. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Webb ERO Production Team

The Tarantula Nebula earned its name for the dusty filaments that appear in earlier images captured by other telescopes, and is a favorite of astronomers with a special interest in star formation, NASA said. This is because the nebula’s chemical composition and development are similar to the enormous star-forming regions observed at the universe’s so-called “cosmic noon,” a time when the cosmos was just a few billion years old and star formation was at its height.

Recommended Videos

Also known as 30 Doradus, the nebula’s cavity, which you can see at the center of the image, has been hollowed out by intense radiation from a cluster of huge young stars that appear in the image as blue dots of light.

Related

“Only the densest surrounding areas of the nebula resist erosion by these stars’ powerful stellar winds, forming pillars that appear to point back toward the cluster,” NASA says.

There’s still much for astronomers to learn about how stars form, but Webb’s advanced infrared cameras are sending back new kinds of images that reveal events behind the thick clouds of stellar nurseries.

“Webb has already begun revealing a universe never seen before, and is only getting started on rewriting the stellar creation story,” NASA said.

The James Webb Space Telescope launched from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida toward the end of 2021 and is a joint mission involving NASA and its European and Canadian counterparts.

Since reaching its orbital position in deep space earlier in the summer, it’s been beaming back incredible imagery for astronomers to examine as they seek to learn more about the origins of the universe while also searching for planets like our own that could support life.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Trevor Mogg
Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
See a festive cosmic chicken captured by the VLT Survey Telescope
The Running Chicken Nebula comprises several clouds, all of which we can see in this vast image from the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), hosted at ESO’s Paranal site. This 1.5-billion pixel image spans an area in the sky of about 25 full Moons. The clouds shown in wispy pink plumes are full of gas and dust, illuminated by the young and hot stars within them.

A new image from the VLT Survey Telescope shows a beautiful region called the Running Chicken Nebula, which makes for a striking festive scene. Located 6,500 light-years away, this region is full of bright young stars that sculpt the clouds of dust and gas around them to form complex structures.

The Running Chicken Nebula comprises several clouds, all of which we can see in this vast image from the VLT Survey Telescope (VST), hosted at European Southern Observatory’s Paranal site. This 1.5-billion-pixel image spans an area in the sky of about 25 full moons. The clouds shown in wispy pink plumes are full of gas and dust, and are illuminated by the young and hot stars within them. ESO/VPHAS+ team. Acknowledgement: CASU

Read more
James Webb captures a unique view of Uranus’s ring system
This image of Uranus from NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows the planet and its rings in new clarity. The Webb image exquisitely captures Uranus’s seasonal north polar cap, including the bright, white, inner cap and the dark lane in the bottom of the polar cap. Uranus’ dim inner and outer rings are also visible in this image, including the elusive Zeta ring—the extremely faint and diffuse ring closest to the planet.

A festive new image from the James Webb Space Telescope has been released, showing the stunning rings of Uranus. Although these rings are hard to see in the visible light wavelength -- which is why you probably don't think of Uranus as having rings like Saturn -- these rings shine out brightly in the infrared wavelength that Webb's instruments operate in.

The image was taken using Webb's NIRCam instrument and shows the rings in even more detail than a previous Webb image of Uranus, which was released earlier this year.

Read more
James Webb spots tiniest known brown dwarf in stunning star cluster
The central portion of the star cluster IC 348. Astronomers combed the cluster in search of tiny, free-floating brown dwarfs.

A new image from the James Webb Space Telescope shows a stunning view of a star cluster that contains some of the smallest brown dwarfs ever identified. A brown dwarf, also sometimes known as a failed star, is an object halfway between a star and a planet -- too big to be a planet but not large enough to sustain the nuclear fusion that defines a star.

It may sound surprising, but the definition of when something stops being a planet and starts being a star is, in fact, a little unclear. Brown dwarfs differ from planets in that they form like stars do, collapsing due to gravity, but they don't sustain fusion, and their size can be comparable to large planets. Researchers study brown dwarfs to learn about what makes the difference between these two classes of objects.

Read more