Sagittarius C : James Webb Space Telescope Captured Image
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured a image of the dense centre of the Milky Way galaxy with clarity never seen before.
- Sagittarius C (Sgr C) is the star-forming region known to be situated approximately 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*.
- It is revealing a bustling cluster of protostars within an infrared-dark cloud.
- These nascent stars are in the process of accumulating mass, their outflows glowing intensely in the infrared spectrum, akin to embers in a cosmic bonfire.
- The cloud that protostars are emerging from is so dense that the light from stars behind it cannot reach Webb.
- Scattered throughout are smaller infrared-dark clouds, akin to celestial voids against the starry backdrop, signalling the birthplaces of future stars.
- Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) has detected extensive emissions from ionised hydrogen on the periphery of the dark cloud, highlighted in a striking cyan hue.
James Webb Space Telescope:
- It was built in collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency(ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency.
- It was launched in December 2021.
- It is presently at a point in space known as the Sun-Earth L2 Lagrange point.
- Lagrange Point 2 is one of the five points in the orbital plane of the Earth-Sun system.
