Celebrate a Year of JWST With This Ludicrous Image of Rho Ophiuchi - by briankoberlein
Astronomy is driven by data. We take spectra of distant galaxies, plot the temperatures and brightness of main sequence stars, and graph the gravitational chirps of merging black holes. All of this data allows us to understand the universe around us. We don’t need images to do that, just data. But we still capture images even when we already have the data. We value them for their wondrous beauty, and for the stories they tell.
The image is of a star-forming region within the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. It is just 460 light-years away and is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth. In the image, you can see more than 50 small young stars. They have masses of no more than the Sun, and in time will drift into the galaxy to become their own stellar systems.
We know most of them will have planets because we can see many of them have the shadows of protoplanetary disks. Gas and dust swirling around the young stars out of which their planets will form. The image also shows bright stars that will clear away the clouds and drive the young stars from their stellar nursery. It is an image of cosmic creation.
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