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Webb telescope5/16/2023 ![]() Superb images of Mars, Jupiter and Neptune have already been released by the JWST team, as well as observations of the DART impact on the asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022. "We will be observing the solar system with the James Webb Space Telescope, and have been doing so," said Milam. The planets of our solar system are one starting point. ![]() JWST is also promising to do the same for planets. That's where the WR 124 observations come in - the central star shedding the nebula from its outer layers has a mass 30 times that of our sun and will eventually explode as a supernova. But astronomers don't just want to learn about how stars and planets form they also want to learn more about how they evolve. It's just really an exciting time to be part of that field and understand how our sun was born and how the solar system was formed, and this is giving us that first real glimpse of it."īy peering through the clouds of dusty gas that envelop star-forming regions that are opaque at visible wavelengths of light, JWST's infrared vision is able to tease out these important details. Not only are we seeing star formation in our own galaxy, but even in other galaxies … and we're getting this detail now that we used to only have for our own galactic understanding, now expanding into these other galaxies across the universe. " understanding star formation in a way that we've never really had access to, with this whole new sensitivity and detail that we've never had before. "One area where we're really getting a lot of new information is the birth of stars," Milam said at the SXSW event. In the case of WR 124, the data from the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and the Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) reveal the clumpy structure of the dust surrounding WR 124, allowing astronomers to better understand how the dust is produced, the size and quantity of dust particles present, and how dust from other such "Wolf-Rayet" stars contributes to the Milky Way's overall dust content, which is then recycled in the next generation of stars and planets.
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