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NASA's Webb Reveals New Features in Heart of Milky Way

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November 20, 2023 10:00AM (EST)Release ID: 2023-148
A crowded region of space, full of stars and colorful clouds, more than twice as wide as it is tall. A funnel-shaped region of space appears darker than its surroundings with fewer stars. It is wider at the top edge of the image, narrowing towards the bottom. Toward the narrow end of this dark region a small clump of red and white appears to shoot out streamers upward and left. A large, bright cyan-colored area surrounds the lower portion of the funnel-shaped dark area, forming a rough U shape. The cyan-colored area has needle-like, linear structures and becomes more diffuse in the center of the image. The right side of the image is dominated by clouds of orange and red, with a purple haze.

Summary

The play of darkness and light in our galaxy’s crowded core is put on display like never before.

A bright field of gas sweeps around the edge of a dark, dense cloud where young stars are bursting out to take their place in the universe. They join an estimated 500,000 other stars in the scene, of various ages, sizes, and colors. It’s the hub of our Milky Way galaxy, a city center at rush hour, making our solar system’s calm corner a frontier outpost by comparison.  Discover the new features – and mysteries – NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed with its unprecedented infrared-light view of the chaotic region, and what it means for astronomy.

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Full Article

The latest image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a portion of the dense center of our galaxy in unprecedented detail, including never-before-seen features astronomers have yet to explain. The star-forming region, named Sagittarius C (Sgr C), is about 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. “There's never been any infrared data on this region with the level of resolution and sensitivity we get with Webb, so we are seeing lots of features here for the first time,” said the observation team’s principal investigator ...

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Visit NASA Science to view the full news release including article text and associated Webb imagery, graphics, scientific visualizations, videos, captions, text descriptions, and other information.

News releases highlighting the discoveries of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope are produced for NASA by the Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI) in Baltimore, Maryland, under NASA Contract NAS5-03127. News release content is developed by the News Team in STScI’s Office of Public Outreach.

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