Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO; IR (Webb): NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI
Breaking Down the Cosmic Cliffs
Hot stars form from cold dense clouds of gas and dust.
One of the best places to watch this transformation is the Carina Nebula, a (relatively) nearby region of the Milky Way where some of the youngest, most massive and hottest stars in our Galaxy can be found. As massive stars form, their strong ultraviolet radiation and their powerful stellar winds blast into these dense dust clouds, carving out bubbles of hot gas within these cold dusty zones, forever altering their environment. This process can end star formation in central regions of the cloud, while helping it begin on the edges. One of the first, and most spectacular, images from NASA's James Webb Space Telescope highlighted the "Cosmic Cliffs", a boundary of dust marking the edge of a dense, cold region of the nebula. The image above shows a more complete picture of how newly-formed stars affect their home. The image combines an X-ray image by the Chandra X-ray telescope in blue, purple and white with a JWST image detailing the distribution of the dust cloud. The X-ray image shows high-energy radiation from the massive stars in the center and the the hot gas produced by the combined action of the stellar winds from the cluster cluster stars. These winds bulldoze their way into the cloud, creating the dense boundary of dust seen in the JWST image, where new stars can form.
Published: August 29, 2022
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Last modified Monday, 12-Aug-2024 12:13:10 EDT