James Webb Telescope captures glittering star nursery Westerlund 2 in stunning detail
The James Webb Space Telescope has revealed a stunning new image of the Westerlund 2 star cluster, located 20,000 light-years away in the Carina constellation. The image shows massive young stars shaping glowing clouds of gas and dust inside the Gum 29 nebula.
New Delhi: The James Webb Space Telescope has put a seizing end to 2025 with a breathtaking star portrait. An astounding picture of the Westerlund 2, a huge cluster of stars shining in the Gum 29 nebula, is shown in the final Webb Picture of the Month by ESA. The scene is some 20,000 light-years distant in the Carina constellation and appears to be celebratory, though it takes advantage of extreme stellar activity.
The image was made by the application of data provided by Webb in the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), revealing that there are thousands of stars enclosed within the masses of gas and dust. The cluster covers an area of approximately 6-13 light-years, and it hosts some of the hottest and the most spectacular stars in the Milky Way. Westerlund 2 appears in Hubble in the 25th anniversary image in 2015, but Webb gives a much closer and deeper view.
A cluster shaped by powerful young stars
In the upper section of the picture is the core of Westerlund 2. It is filled with young, huge stars and radiating with a lot of heat. Their power carves out the nebula around them and forces the gas into dramatic walls and twisting clouds of red and orange. The light of these stars is prevalent in the whole scene.
Thinner strands of blue and pink gas are floating around and underneath the cluster, between thicker parts. There are myriads of diluted stars sprinkled through. Some are only coming to shine and are still enclosed in the substance out of which they were made. Frontal stars that are brighter and nearer to the earth have sharp and spiked shapes due to the optics of Webb.
Webb uncovers hidden brown dwarfs
The new observations also have presented one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs. It is the first time that astronomers have discovered the complete group of brown dwarfs in this huge young cluster. A few of them are ten times more massive than Jupiter.
The data has shown that there are several hundred stars that have discs round their cores at various levels of development. This is assisting scientists to learn the transformation of the discs as time goes by and how the planets would be able to develop under harsh conditions such as in Westerlund 2. The picture was created based on the Webb programme #3523, which was directed by M. Guarcello, as a part of the Extended Westerlund 1 and 2 Open Clusters Survey (EWOCS).