Nasa's Webb Peers Deeper Into Mysterious Flame Nebula - Nasa Science

The flame nebula, located about 1,400 light-yars away from earth, is a hotbed of star formation less than 1 million years old. Within the flame nebula, there are objects so small that their cos will never be able to fuse hydrogen like full-Fledged stars-Brown dwarfs.

Brown Dwarfs, often Called “Failed Stars,” Over Time build very dim and much coole than stars. These factors make observing brown dwarfs with most telescopes. When they are very young, however, they are still relatively warmer and brighter and therefore Easier to observe despite despite the obscuring, dense dust and gas that compresses the flame nebula in this case.

Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope can pierce this dense, dusty region and see the fant infrared glow from young brown dwarfs. A team of astronomers used this capability to explore the lowest mass limit of brown dwarfs within the flame nebula. The result, they found, was free-photoing objects rooughly two to three times the mass of jupiter, although they were sensitive down to 0.5 times the mass of Jupiter.

“The goal of this project was to explore the fundamental low-mass limit of the star and brown dwarf formation process. With webb, webb, we’re able to probe the faintest and lowest mass objects, “said lead study author matthew de furio of the university of texas at austin.

The low-mass limit the team sought is set by a process called fragmentation. In this process large molecular cloudsFrom which both stars and brown dwarfs are born, break apart into smaller and smaller units, or fragments.

Fragmentation is highly dependent on Several Factors with the Balance Between Temperature, Thermal Pressure, and Gravity Being Among the Most Important. More Specifically, as Fragments Contract under the Force of Gravity, their CORES heat up. If a core is massive enough, it will begin to fuse hydrogen. The outward pressure created by that fusion counters gravity, stopping collaps and stabilizing the object (then knowledge as a star). However, fragments who are not compact and hot enough to Burn Hydrogen Continue to Contract as Long as they radiate as they have their internal heat.

“The cooling of these clouds is important if you have enough internal energy, it will fight that gravity,” Says Michael Meyer of the University of Michigan. “If the clouds cool efficiently, they collapse and break apart.”

Fragmentation Stops when a Fragment Backets opaque enough to reabsorb its radiation, thereby stopping the cooling and preventing further collapse. Theories were placed the lower limit of these fragments anywhere between one and ten Jupiter masses. This study significantly shrinks that range as webb’s census counted up fragments of different masses with the nebula.

“As found in many previous studies, as you go to lower masses, you actually get more objects up to about ten times the mass of jupiter. In our study with the james webb space telescope, we are sensitive down to 0.5 times the mass of jupiter, and we are finding significant player and more things as you go below tens of the mass of jupiter, ” Furio explained. “We find lesser five-jupiter-mass objects than ten-Jupiter-Mass Objects, And We Find Way Fewer Three-Jupiter-Mass Objects Objects Than But-Jupiter-Mass Objects. We don’t really find any objects below two or three jupiter masses, and we expect to see them if they are there, so we are hypotesizing

Meyer added, “Webb, for the first time, has been able to probe up to and beyond that limit. If that limit is real, there really should be any one-judgmenter-mass objects free-phloating out in our milky way galaxy, unless they were formed as planets and next ejected out of a Planetary System. “

Brown Dwarfs, Given the Difability of Finding Them, Have a Wealth of Information to Provide, Particularly in Star Formation and Planetary Research Given Given Their Similarities to Both Stars and Planets. Nasa’s hubble space telescope has been on the hunt for these brown dwarfs for decades.

Even though hubble can’t observe the brown dwarfs in the flame nebula to as low a mass as webb can, it was Crucial in Identifying Candidates for Further Study. This study is an example of how webb took the baton-decades of hubble data from the orion molecular cloud complex –nd enabled in-depth research.

“It’s really deficult to do this work, looking at brown dwarfs down to even ten jupiter masses, from the ground, especially in regions like this. And having existing hubble data over the last 30 years or so allowed us to know that this is a really useful star-forming region to target. We needed to have webb to be able to study this particular Science Topic, “Said de furio.

“It’s a quantum leap in our capabilities between undersrstanding what was going on from hub. Webb is really Opening an entryly new Realm of Possibility, Understanding these Objects, “Explained Astronomer Massimo Robberto of the Space Telescope Science institute.

This team is continuing to study the flame nebula, using webb’s sectroscopic tools to further characterize the different objects with dusty coacon.

“There’s a big overlap between the things that would be planets and the things that are very, very low mass brown dwarfs,” Meyer stated. “And that’s our job in the next five years: to figure out which is which and why.”

These results are accepted for publication in the astrophysical journey letters.

The james webb space telescope is the world’s premier space science observatorry. Webb is solving mysteries in our Solar System, Looking Beyond to distant worlds Around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universes and our place in it. Webb is an International Program LED by Nasa with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).