JWST Spies Once-hidden Treasures in the W51 Starbirth Crèche
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Star formation is a dramatic and complex process that erupts throughout the Universe. Yet, a lot of the action gets hidden by clouds of gas and dust. That's where observatories such as the James Webb Telescope JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) come in handy. They use infrared light and radio waves, respectively, to pierce the veil surrounding the process of starbirth.
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JWST Spies Once-hidden Treasures in the W51 Starbirth Crèche By Carolyn Collins Petersen - April 06, 2026 01:04 AM UTC | Stars Star formation is a dramatic and complex process that erupts throughout the Universe. Yet, a lot of that action gets hidden by clouds of gas and dust. That's where observatories such as the James Webb Telescope JWST and the Atacama Large Millimeter Array come in handy. They use infrared light and radio waves respectively, to pierce the veil surrounding the process of starbirth. A team led by University of Florida doctoral candidate Taehwa Yoo recently used to JWST to make observations of the giant Milky Way starbirth region Westerhout 51 (W51). It lies about 17,000 light-years away from Earth in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. The images and data they collected revealed many fine details of the star-formation activity going on there. “With optical and ground-based infrared telescopes, we can’t see through the dust to see the young stars,” said Adam Ginsburg, Ph.D., a professor of astronomy at UF. “Now we can.” An overview of W51A region. The composite image is produced by combining NIRCam F360M , F410M , and MIRI F560W on JWST. The north and east directions in ICRS coordinates are marked as arrows at the upper left corner. Courtesy Yoo, et al. Despite the impressive images and data, some aspects of star birth remain hidden away behind clouds too dense even for JWST to pierce. The team compared their JWST images to observations of the same region made by the ALMA, and found that only a fraction of stars are detectable by both telescopes. The observations that JWST did make, however, showed a lot of detail in the structures it could see. And that provides astronomers with new insights into the starbirth process. "Because of James Webb, we can see those hidden, young massive stars forming in this star-forming region," Yoo said. "By looking at them, we can study their formation mechanisms." Digging Into W51's Starbirth Activity C...
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