Written by Amira Shehata
Sunday, February 19, 2023 01:00 AM
Capture NASA’s New Space Telescope”James WebbSome pictures of nearby galaxies Outer SpaceBut these images are more than just beautiful mosaics of nearby galaxies. They can also provide clues about star formation, because the galaxies he captured are full of gas and dust found in interplanetary space, stars and asteroids.
Image of nearby galaxies
This is known as the interstellar medium, and is of particular interest to astronomers because, under the right conditions, it is where stars form, which is what researchers at the University of California San Diego have focused on in Webb’s new images.
Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are found in the images, as they are small molecule-sized particles of dust that are believed to play a large role in the formation of stars.
Astrophysicists weren’t quite sure how they evolved, or what their specific function was in the process.
What experts do know is that when PAHs absorb a photon from a star, they vibrate and produce emission features that can be detected in the mid-infrared electromagnetic spectrum.
Close-up pictures of the galaxy
This matters when it comes to Webb, because the new $10 billion (£7.4 billion) observatory has a camera designed to capture objects in this specific wavelength range.
However, the larger dust grains in the interstellar medium are not captured in this spectrum, which is why it is so useful to astronomers because it means they can only look at PAHs.
