Amazing James Webb Space Telescope's View Of Carina Nebula

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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

Transcript

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.

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