James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Peering Into the Tendrils of NGC 604 with NASA's Webb

Roll out the red carpet! The stars are here. Star-forming region NGC 604 contains more than 200 of the hottest, most massive kinds of stars (B-type and O-type stars), all in the early stages of their lives. There is no region quite like this within our own Milky Way, making NGC 604 a perfect window for astronomers to study young, massive stars. In Webb’s near-infrared image of the region, we can see tendrils and clumps of bright red emission, extending out from large bubbles. Stellar winds from those bright, hot young stars have carved out these cavities. How stars are born and how they interact with their environments are two big questions in astronomy today. Webb’s ultra-sensitive infrared eye is revealing more intricacies of these processes than ever before. Learn more: go.nasa.gov/49OaYAy Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI [Image Description: At the center of the image is a nebula on the black background of space. The nebula is comprised of clumpy, red, filamentary clouds. At the center-right of the red clouds is a large cavernous bubble, and at the center of the bubble there is a opaque blueish glow with speckles of stars. At the edges of the bubble, the dust is white. There are several other smaller cavernous bubbles at the top of the nebula. There are thousands of stars that fill the surrounding area outside of the nebula, most of them are yellow or white – at 11 o’clock and 6 o’clock there are extremely bright stars with 8 diffraction spikes. There are also some smaller, red stars and a few disc-shaped galaxies scattered about the image.] Image & Description by NASA