NASA’s James Webb Observes Rare Star Formation

Scientists from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope have observed a rare process of star formation. They observed the scene of star formation in the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster. According to scientists, the Phoenix Galaxy Cluster is located 580 million light-years from Earth.

This cluster contains a supermassive black hole, whose mass is about 1,000 solar masses. This black hole can affect the formation of nearby stars by heating gas. Data from James Webb, the Hubble Space Telescope, the Chandra X-ray Observatory and various ground-based telescopes have revealed a flow of cold gas that serves as the fuel for star birth. This gas is challenging long-standing theories about the evolution of galaxy clusters.

A study published in the scientific journal Nature says that the James Webb spectral data provide a detailed map of the cool gas within the cluster. The Phoenix cluster has been observed to be forming unusually high numbers of stars. In this regard, Michael McDonald, a scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the United States, said that previous observations had shown inconsistent cooling rates of the gas at different temperatures.

James Webb detected intermediate-temperature gas, which acts as a bridge between the hottest and coldest stages of star formation. The observation is being confirmed using James Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). This gas has a temperature of about 540,000 degrees Fahrenheit. The presence of this cool gas resolves inconsistencies in previous studies and provides a complete picture of the cluster’s star formation cycle.