|
| This image by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) features the central region of the Chamaeleon I dark molecular cloud, which resides 630 light years away. |
The James Webb Space Telescope peered inside a wispy molecular cloud located
630 light-years away and spied ices made of different elements.
Molecular clouds are interstellar groupings of gas and dust where hydrogen
and carbon monoxide molecules can form. Dense clumps within these clouds can
collapse to form young stars called protostars.
The Webb telescope focused on the Chamaeleon I dark molecular cloud, which
appears blue in the new image. A young protostar, called Ced 110 IRS 4,
glows in orange to the left. The journal Nature Astronomy published a study
including the image on Monday.
More orange dots represent light from stars in the background, piercing
through the cloud. The starlight helped astronomers determine the diverse
range of frozen molecules within the Chamaeleon I dark molecular cloud,
which is forming dozens of young stars.
The Webb telescope views the universe through infrared light, which is
invisible to the human eye. Infrared light can reveal previously hidden
aspects of the cosmos and pierce dense clusters of gas and dust that would
otherwise obscure the view.
Astronomers have used the space observatory to discover a diverse range of
some of the coldest ices in the darkest regions of a molecular cloud to
date. During a survey of the cloud, the international research team
identified water ice, as well as frozen forms of ammonia, methanol, methane
and carbonyl sulfide.
These icy molecules could contribute to the formation of stars and planets —
and even the building blocks of life.
Ices can supply planets with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen and sulfur,
which could lead to the formation of a habitable planet like Earth, where
they are used in planetary atmospheres as well as amino acids, sugars and
alcohols.
“Our results provide insights into the initial, dark chemistry stage of the
formation of ice on the interstellar dust grains that will grow into the
centimeter-sized pebbles from which planets form in disks,” said lead study
author Melissa McClure, an astronomer and assistant professor at Leiden
Observatory in the Netherlands, in a statement. McClure is the principal
investigator of the observing program.
“These observations open a new window on the formation pathways for the
simple and complex molecules that are needed to make the building blocks of
life.”
Foundations of planetary birth
In addition to simple molecules, the researchers saw evidence of more
complex molecules.
“Our identification of complex organic molecules, like methanol and
potentially ethanol, also suggests that the many star and planetary systems
developing in this particular cloud will inherit molecules in a fairly
advanced chemical state,” said study coauthor Will Rocha, an astronomer and
postdoctoral fellow at Leiden Observatory, in a statement.
“This could mean that the presence of precursors to prebiotic molecules in
planetary systems is a common result of star formation, rather than a unique
feature of our own solar system.”
Astronomers used starlight filtering through the cloud to search for
chemical fingerprints and identify the elements.
“We simply couldn’t have observed these ices without Webb,” said study
coauthor Klaus Pontoppidan, Webb project scientist at the Space Telescope
Science Institute in Baltimore, in a statement.
“The ices show up as dips against a continuum of background starlight. In
regions that are this cold and dense, much of the light from the background
star is blocked, and Webb’s exquisite sensitivity was necessary to detect
the starlight and therefore identify the ices in the molecular cloud.”
Reference:
McClure, M.K., Rocha, W.R.M., Pontoppidan, K.M. et al. An Ice Age JWST
inventory of dense molecular cloud ices. Nat Astron (2023).
DOI: 10.1038/s41550-022-01875-w
Tags:
Space & Astrophysics