New Delhi: NASA had earlier revealed images of the core of the Phantom galaxy, also designated as M74 and NGC 628 in August 2022, captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. Now, the flagship deep space observatory has turned its sensitive gaze once again to the Phantom galaxy, at a distance of 32 million lightyears from the Earth in the constellation of Pisces, revealing new features. The Phantom galaxy is nearly face-on from the vantage point of the Earth, offering spectacular views of its well-defined spiral arms, interspersed by dark lanes of gas and dust, making it a popular target for astronomical observations.
The cherry red blossoms in the image are stellar nurseries where the energetic outpourings from newborn stars are ionising the surrounding gas. This reshaping of the material within stellar nurseries through the mechanism of stellar feedback plays an important role in the distribution of the raw material of star formation throughout the galaxy, resulting in dense knots of star formation, as well as cavernous bubbles. The stellar feedback plays a major role in the rate at which stars are formed. The new campaign by Webb has provided a window to astronomers to stellar nurseries distributed across the universe.
How baby stars are born
The stellar nurseries were new stars are born are shrouded by gas and dust, that appear as dark clouds to optical instruments. However, infrared light passes easily through these clouds, which makes the James Webb Space Telescope a suitable instrument to observe stellar nurseries. The instrument is improving the scientific understanding of star formation, and has uncovered the links between stellar nurseries and star clusters, consisting of up to a million stars that are born around the same time within the same star forming region. The brighter and larger complexes of stellar nurseries are often found in the fringes of galaxies, according to the data captured by Webb.
