“There has never been infrared data on this region with the resolution and sensitivity that we get with Webb, so we are seeing many features here for the first time.” Astronomer Samuel Crowe from the University of Virginia speaks about the current image taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. Behind the sea of colors in the picture is the star-forming region called Sagittarius C. It is located in the center of the Milky Way, only around 300 light-years from the central black hole of our galaxy.
Among the estimated 500,000 stars in this image, taken by the telescope's NIRCam near-infrared camera, are countless protostars. This refers to stars that are still in the process of forming and are increasingly gaining mass. A dense collection of these protostars can be seen in the center of the image as a reddish light spot with outgrowths. Their hot emanations shine through the veiling, infrared-dark zones of this star cradle.
Colored in cyan, large-scale emission of ionized hydrogen can be seen. These hot clouds of charged hydrogen were formed from molecular hydrogen by the intense radiation of protostars and young stars. What is also noticeable in this ionized cloud are some zones in which the gas is compressed almost in a needle shape.
“The Webb image is breathtaking and the science we will gain from it is even more exciting,” says Crowe. “High-mass stars are factories for heavy elements. Understanding them better therefore helps to learn more about the history of much of our universe.” How the stellar environment process depends on the cosmic environment, compared to other regions of the galaxy or whether there are more massive stars in the center of the Milky Way than Crowe and his team are now trying to clarify the issues that arise in the outer areas.