The James Webb Space Telescope took a photo of Westerlund-1, the most massive young star cluster in our galaxy.
This was reported by the press service of the European Space Agency (ESA).
Westerlund-1 is located approximately 12 thousand light years from Earth behind a huge interstellar cloud of gas and dust. In the earth’s sky it is located in the constellation Zhertovnik; in 1961 it was discovered from Australia by the Swedish astronomer Bengt Westerlund.
The uniqueness of Westerlund-1 lies in its vast, dense and diverse “population” of massive stars – it has no analogues in other known clusters of the Milky Way in terms of the number of stars, the richness of their spectral types and evolutionary phases.
All the stars found in this cluster are very massive, spanning the entire range of stellar classifications down to blue supergiants and yellow hypergiants (almost as bright as a million Suns).
Since such stars have a fairly short life, Westerlund-1 is very young from an astronomical point of view, ESA notes. — Astronomers estimate the age of the cluster to be somewhere between 3.5 and 5 million years (its exact age is still a matter of debate), making it a newborn cluster in our galaxy.
It is thought that in the future it will likely evolve from an open cluster to a globular cluster – roughly spherical, tightly packed clusters of old stars bound together by gravity. It is also expected that Westerlund-1 will have a significant impact on those around it – over a period of time of less than 40 million years, the cluster will be the site of more than 1.5 thousand supernova explosions.
If the solar system were located at the very center of this remarkable cluster, our sky would be full of hundreds of stars, the brightness of which would not be inferior to the brightness of the full Moon, ESA notes.
Westerlund-1 is the most massive compact young cluster discovered in the Milky Way galaxy.
Astronomers believe that this extreme cluster contains between 50 thousand and 100 thousand times the mass of the Sun, but all its stars are located in a region no more than six light years across, ESA notes. “It is the largest remaining cluster of supernovae in the Milky Way galaxy and the closest cluster of supernovae to Earth.
An amazing photo of a star explosion was taken by the James Webb orbital telescope (PHOTO)
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.