With previously unheard-of resolution at infrared wavelengths, researchers using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have provided the first look into star formation, gas, and dust in close-by galaxies.
A preliminary collection of 21 scientific publications that offer fresh insight into some of the universe’s most minute processes has been made possible by the data, claims NASA.
Janice Lee, the Gemini Observatory’s lead scientist at the National Science Foundation’s NOIRLab in the US and an associate astronomer at the University of Arizona in the US, is in charge of the Webb observations.
Team member David Thilker of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, remarked, “The clarity with which we are viewing the fine structure really caught us by surprise.
According to team member Karin Sandstrom of the University of California, San Diego, “areas that are completely dark in Hubble imaging light up in exquisite detail in these new infrared images, allowing us to study how the dust in the interstellar medium has absorbed the light from forming stars and emitted it back out in the infrared, illuminating an intricate network of gas and dust.”