De nouvelles images Web révèlent une vue imprenable sur la nébuleuse d’Orion
“We are blown away by the breathtaking images of the Orion Nebula. We started this project in 2017, so we have been waiting more than five years to get these data,” said Western astrophysicist Els Peeters.
These images have been obtained as part of the Early Release Science program Photodissociation Regions for All (PDRs4All ID 1288) on JWST. Co-led by Peeters, French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) scientist Olivier Berné, and Institut d’Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS) associate professor Emilie Habart, PDRs4All is an international collaboration that involves a team of more than one hundred scientists in 18 countries. Other Western University astrophysicists involved in PDRs4All include Jan Cami, Ameek Sidhu, Ryan Chown, Bethany Schefter, Sofia Pasquini, and Baria Kahn.
“These new observations allow us to better understand how massive stars transform the gas and dust cloud in which they are born,” said Peeters. She is a Western astronomy professor and faculty member at the Institute for Earth and Space Exploration.
“Massive young stars emit large quantities of ultraviolet radiation directly into the native cloud that still surrounds them, and this changes the physical shape of the cloud as well as its chemical makeup. How precisely this works, and how it affects further star and planet formation is not yet well known.”
The newly released images reveal numerous spectacular structures inside the nebula, down to scales comparable to the size of the Solar System.
“We clearly see several dense filaments. These filamentary structures may promote a new generation of stars in the deeper regions of the cloud of dust and gas. Stellar systems already in formation show up as well,” said Berné. “Inside its cocoon, young stars with a disk of dust and gas in which planets form are observed in the nebula. Small cavities dug by new stars being blown by the intense radiation and stellar winds of newborn stars are also clearly visible.”
Proplyds, or ionized protoplanetary disks, consist of a central protostar surrounded by a disk of dust and gas in which planets form. Scattered throughout the images are several protostellar jets, outflows, and nascent stars embedded in dust.
“We have never been able to see the intricate fine details of how interstellar matter is structured in these environments, and to figure out how planetary systems can form in the presence of this harsh radiation. These images reveal the heritage of the interstellar medium in planetary systems,” said Habart.
Évolution analogique
La nébuleuse d’Orion a longtemps été considérée comme un environnement similaire au berceau du système solaire (quand elle s’est formée il y a plus de 4,5 milliards d’années). C’est pourquoi les scientifiques s’intéressent aujourd’hui à l’observation de la nébuleuse d’Orion. Ils espèrent comprendre, par analogie, ce qui s’est passé durant le premier million d’années d’évolution de notre planète.
Parce que les noyaux des pépinières stellaires comme la nébuleuse d’Orion sont obscurcis par de grandes quantités de poussière d’étoiles, il est impossible d’étudier ce qui se passe à l’intérieur en lumière visible avec des télescopes tels que Le télescope spatial Hubble. Webb détecte un fichier lumière infrarouge du cosmos, permettant aux astronomes de voir ces couches de poussière et de détecter les mouvements qui se produisent dans les profondeurs de la nébuleuse.
« Observer la nébuleuse d’Orion a été un défi car elle est trop lumineuse pour les appareils d’une sensibilité sans précédent de Webb. Mais Webb est incroyable, Webb peut également observer des galaxies lointaines et faibles. »[{ » attribute= » »>Jupiter and Orion, which are some of the brightest sources in the infrared sky,” said Berné.
At the heart of the Orion Nebula is the ‘trapezium cluster’ (also known as Theta Orionis), which was discovered by Galileo. It contains young massive stars whose intense ultraviolet radiation shapes the cloud of dust and gas. Understanding how this intense radiation impacts their surroundings is a key question in understanding the formation of stellar systems like our own solar system.
“Seeing these first images of the Orion Nebula is just the beginning. The PDRs4All team is working hard to analyze the Orion data and we expect new discoveries about these early phases of the formation of stellar systems,” said Habart. “We are excited to be part of Webb’s journey of discoveries.”
Webb is the most powerful space telescope ever created in human history. It was developed in partnership with NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), and boasts an iconic 6.5-meter-wide mirror, consisting of a honeycomb-like pattern of 18 hexagonal, gold-coated mirror segments and a five-layer, diamond-shaped sunshield the size of a tennis court. As a partner, CSA receives a guaranteed share of Webb’s observation time, making Canadian scientists some of the first to study data collected by the most advanced space telescope ever constructed.
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