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What it is : super mavin cluster Westerlund 1

Where it is:12,000 easy - age away in the constellation Ara .

A dense cluster of bright stars, each with six large and two small diffraction spikes, due to the telescope’s optics. They have a variety of sizes depending on their brightness and distance from us in the cluster, and different colors reflecting different types of star. Patches of billowing red gas can be seen in and around the cluster, lit up by the stars. Small stars in the cluster blend into a background of distant stars and galaxies on black.

JWST’s view of Westerlund 1, one of the closest “super star” clusters to the solar system.

When it was shared : Oct. 3 , 2024

Why it ’s so limited :

Westerlund 1 is a galactic factory of epical proportion . Visible from Earth ’s Southern Hemisphere just below the tail of the Scorpion — and stuffy to the sum of theMilky Way — it ’s the largest roll in the hay asterisk bunch in our galaxy .

An image of the Milky Way captured by the MeerKAT radio telescope. At the center of the MeerKAT image the region surrounding the Milky Way’s supermassive black hole blazes bright. Huge vertical filamentary structures echo those captured on a smaller scale by Webb in Sagittarius C’s blue-green hydrogen cloud.

It ’s the ultimate example of a " super star clump . " While most such clustering are about 10,000 times the sun ’s the great unwashed , Westerlund 1 is 50,000 to 100,000 times the solar peck . Some of its century of very monumental star are 2,000 times large than our Lord’s Day . If they were in thesolar system , they would reach as far as the scope of Saturn and polish 1 million time undimmed than the Lord’s Day . If Earth orbited a star within Westerlund 1 , our nighttime sky would be full of 100 of stars as bright as the full moon .

Astronomers conceive that within the next 40 million years — the winking of an eye in cosmic terms — more than 1,500 supernovae ( asterisk explode at the terminal of their lives ) will get down up Westerlund 1 . Right now , the clustering is about 3.5 million to 5 million years quondam .

This image was announced as the latestJames Webb Space Telescope(JWST)Picture of the Monthand published as both awide - flying field viewand apanning video . It is something only the JWST could create because Westerlund 1 is hidden from optical scope like Hubble , which ca n’t see through interstellar cloud of gas and junk . JWST ’s Near Infrared Camera ( NIRCam ) , however , can peer through junk and accelerator because it pick up light beyond the red-faced end of the seeable spectrum in infrared wavelength , which is not scattered by this cosmic detritus .

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A photo of a spiral galaxy

Twists of red flatulency within the virtuoso cluster are visible at the top and center of the image . The bright whizz in JWST ’s image all have six large and two small snowbird - same diffraction spikes because of the way spark travels as a wafture from the 18 hexangular mirror in the telescope ’s primary mirror . The two horizontal line of descent through each star consequence from the light being reflect from the primary mirror to a secondary mirror , which two strut hold in place .

Westerland 1 resembles the Milky Way ’s past when it create many more stars . Just a few such clusters go and offer clew for uranologist trying to reckon out what pass off in the Milky Way ’s removed history — and how the most monolithic stars in our galaxy exist and fail .

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