An incredible image of the “peak” in the center of the Milky Way

A bright field of gas rushes around the edge of a dark, dense cloud from which young stars are emerging to take their place in space. They join a group of about 500,000 stars of various ages, sizes and colors. It is the hub of our Milky Way galaxy, the “downtown of rush hour,” making our solar system a quiet part of the border. The James Webb Space Telescope of the American agency NASA has brought an incredible view of this chaotic region in the infrared spectrum, announced the team behind this telescope of the agency NASA.

The photo shows a part of the dense center of our galaxy in incredible detail, and never-before-seen phenomena have been observed that astronomers have yet to explain.

Where stars are made

The star-forming region, called Sagittarius C, is located about 300 light-years from the central supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy, called Sagittarius A*.

– There has never been data on this region in the infrared spectrum with this resolution brought to us by the Web, so now we are seeing many phenomena for the first time. Webb revealed an incredible amount of detail and allowed us to study the formation of stars in this environment in a way that was not possible before – said Samuel Crowe, a student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville.

– The center of the galaxy is the most extreme environment in the Milky Way, where current theories about star formation can be seriously tested – said Jonathan Tan, one of Crowe’s professors and advisors from the University of Virginia.

Along with the estimated 500,000 stars in the picture, there is also a cluster of protostars, stars that are still forming and gaining mass, which creates a glow similar to a campfire. At the heart of that cluster is a previously known massive protostar that has a mass 30 times greater than our Sun.

The NIRCam instrument also recorded emissions of ionized hydrogen around the dark clouds, which are cyan in the image. That, Crowe adds, is the result of photons ejected by young massive stars, but the size of that region is a surprise that requires further investigation.

Galactic center

– The Galactic Center is a crowded, turbulent place. There are turbulent, magnetized gas clouds that form stars, which affect the surrounding gas and its radiation, winds and jets. The web has given us a wealth of data on this extreme charge, and we’re just beginning to examine it, said Ruben Fedriani, a researcher on the project at the Institute of Astrophysics of Andalusia in Spain.

The galactic center is about 25,000 light-years away from us, and Webb can see even individual stars, which is a great advance in the study of that part.

(Telegraf Nauka/Webb Telescope)