James Webb Telescope’s “Starlight Mountain Top” could still be the best image for the observatory – Space Photo of the Week

In this new heavenly dreamscape in James Webbspace Telescope (JWST), the starry sky appears to point to a milky star herd, just as it appears to point to a bright star herd above in the starry sky.

This is Pismith 24. This is a small open star cluster at the heart of the Lobster Nebula in Constellation Scorpio. This vast area of ​​interstellar gas and dust is one of the closest places to the solar system where the Galaxy’s most huge and extreme stars burn quickly and become younger.

The European Space Agency wrote in its description of the image, the rough orange and brown peaks are huge spires of gas and dust. The highest at the center of the image is 5.4 light years from base to tip. Approximately 200 solar systems are arranged side by side in Neptune’s orbit. Erosion within these spires is caused by powerful stellar winds and ultraviolet rays from the giant newborn stars in the star cluster above. It’s all part of the process – as the gas is eroded and compressed by the radiation of the young star, a new star is born in the spire.

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It’s an independent nursery, but there’s nothing ordinary about the Pismis 24 stars. This is the most known star in the galaxy. The brightest star in the cluster, Pismis 24-1 was once considered a single star with a solar mass of 200 to 300. This is almost twice the upper limit of the commonly accepted upper limit of the star.

However, in 2006, Hubble Space Telescope discovered that the Pismis 24-1 actually had at least two separate stars orbiting each other. With solar masses of 74 and 66 respectively, the two stars are one of the largest and brightest stars in the Milky Way. Their intense UV rays and starry winds created dusty dream scenery captured infrared by JWST’s near-infrared cameras.

Like all images in JWST, there is a color code to understand before you fully understand what you are seeing. Astronomers assign different color filters to light of different wavelengths. Cyan is a hydrogen gas ionized at high temperatures. The orange is dust. Deep red is cooler and more dense hydrogen. And the white is a starlight scattered in dust. The dark, black area shows gases and dust so thick that even the infrared sensors on JWST can’t penetrate it.

For sublime space images, see Space Photos in this week’s archives.