Unprecedented views of the largest star training region in our galaxy captured by the webb telescope

The powerful James Webb space telescope of NASA has revealed a colorful propagation of stars and cosmic dust in the most active star formation region of the Milky Way.

The telescope studied Sagittarius B2, a massive molecular cloud, NASA said in a press release. The region is only a few hundred light years from the black hole supermassive in the center of the Milky Way and is densely filled with stars, stars formation and complex magnetic fields. Sagittarius B only has 10% of the Galactic Center gas, but produces 50% of its stars.

The instruments of the webb telescope can examine the infrared light that crosses the region to study what forms there.

An image of the average infrared instrument shows an area known as Sagittarius B2 North, which is one of the most rich in humans’ ricious regions, NASA said. The images taken with the average infrared instrument of webb show gas and dust in the region in “unprecedented details”, said NASA. In this image, the stars appear only in the form of blue punctuations through the thick clouds.

When using the near infrared camera of the telescope, astronomers could see colorful stars illuminating brilliant clouds of gas and dust. Astronomers will continue to study these stars to find out more about their size and age, which will shed light on the process of stars formation at the Sagittarius B2.

The new images still leave a few questions to astronomers. The sagittarius B2 areas that look dark and empty are actually “so dense for gas and dust that even webb cannot see through them,” said NASA. These gas and dust clouds will eventually become future stars, NASA said. The clouds also serve as “cocoon” for young stars.

Researchers also hope that the instruments of the webb telescope will be able to help them know why stars training in the center of the Milky Way is so low.

“Humans have been studying the stars for thousands of years, and there is still a lot to understand,” said Nazar Budaiev, a graduate student at the University of Florida and co-pruning investigator of the study. “For all that New Webb shows us, there are also new mysteries to explore, and it’s exciting to be part of this current discovery.”