The James Webb Telescope has captured a never-before-seen image of the heart of the Milky Way.

Space telescope James Webb looked at our stellar surroundings and received a never-before-seen image of the heart of the Milky Way. The world’s most powerful observatory, operated by NASA, has captured part of a region called Sagittarius Clocated at the center of our galaxy, which has revealed features never before observed by astronomers.

Sagittarius C is located approximately 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole. “This region has never had infrared data with the level of resolution and sensitivity that we get from James Webb, so many of the features are being seen here for the first time,” said the observing team’s principal investigator. Samuel CrowThis is stated in a statement from NASA.

This image of the heart of the Milky Way contains about 500 thousand stars of varying sizes and ages. And not far from the center you can see a cluster protostars: Stars that are still forming and gaining mass. The most special thing is massive protostar, whose mass is 30 times the mass of our Sun. Smaller dark infrared clouds dot the image, appearing as dark spaces. This is where future stars are formed.

“Webb reveals an incredible amount of detail, allowing us to study star formation in this environment in a way that was not possible before,” Crowe added. Unlike the Hubble Telescope – its older brother, which primarily observes visible light – the James Webb Telescope captures infrared light, which is what allowed it to uncover these cosmic mysteries.

The Questions Behind James Webb’s Photo of the Center of the Milky Way

Tool NIRKam James Webb’s near-infrared camera also detected large-scale emissions of hydrogen gas (indicated by the yellow dashed line) surrounding the lower part of the dark cloud. Astronomers have discovered needle-like structures in this area, oriented in different directions. What are they? They don’t know it, but the team has already begun an investigation.

“The galactic center is the most extreme environment in our Milky Way, where current theories of star formation can be put to the most rigorous tests,” explained Jonathan Tan, one of Crowe’s advisors at the University of Virginia.

The heart of the Milky Way is approximately 25,000 light-years from our Earth.. A light year is the distance a ray of light travels in one year, and is equivalent to 9.46 trillion kilometers. James Webb has the ability to see the far reaches of our Universe like no other instrument has yet. He recently discovered unknown features of a planet that rains sand, located 200 light years away.

But the center of our galaxy is so close that it allows us to study individual stars. It offers scientists the opportunity to gather new information about how these celestial bodies form and how this process depends on the space environment. And answer, for example, whether more massive stars form at the center of the Milky Way or at the edges of its spiral arms.

“[James] Webb has provided us with a wealth of data about this extreme environment, and we are just beginning to delve into it,” he said. Ruben Fedriani, co-investigator of the project at the Astrophysical Institute of Andalusia in Spain. All the questions and answers help piece together the mystery of how much of our universe came to be. And, therefore, life on our Earth.