The Orion Nebula is a favorite among astronomy enthusiasts. It is a giant stellar nebula from which young stars are forming. Through a telescope it appears as a gray/green domed veil, but cameras reveal the true glory of these star-forming regions. The Sun was once part of such a nebula, and astronomers have been exploring its secrets for decades. Now, a new paper presents the results of a detailed study by the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) that has explored planetary disks around stars in the Orion Nebula.
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The idea that a stellar nebula collapses to form a star was first proposed in the early 1900s by the English astronomer James Jeans. Since then, we have developed a model to describe not only the birth of stars but also their evolution and subsequent death. The process describes how young stars are often accompanied by disks of material, and these protoplanetary disks can collapse to form planets.
To understand all aspects of planetary system formation, it is important to study them in their diverse environments. Unfortunately, these systems are not very common and are often obscured by dust, which makes them difficult to observe. Many of the young planetary systems form where there are high levels of ultraviolet radiation, especially in regions of massive star formation like 6357.
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A prime example of a stellar nursery is the Lobster Nebula , also known by the less appealing title NGC6357 . The nebula is located in the constellation Scorpius at a distance of 6,000 light-years – remember that a light-year is a unit of distance defined by the distance light can travel in one year.
A team of astronomers has pointed JWST toward the Lobster Nebula to probe deep into the nebula. The region under study is home to many young stars. The team chose to focus on 15 disks in three regions in the hope that it will help understand the influence of the environment on planet formation. They studied one disk known as “XUE 1” and explored its inner disk. In their paper, they report the abundance of water, carbon monoxide, hydrocarbons, and acetylene within 1 astronomical unit – this would be impossible without JWST.
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The findings reveal that water and other molecules are found in the inner regions of the disk, where terrestrial planets can form. This is a region that is potentially one of the most extreme environments in the Milky Way. This shows that the conditions for the formation of terrestrial planets are just as likely in high-mass star-forming regions as they are in low-mass ones! The team also found that dust accretion has begun with structures that could lead to planets in systems as young as 0.5 million years old. This suggests that planet formation may be ongoing or even have occurred despite the extremely extreme environment.
Source: universetoday
