Using the James Webb Space Telescope, astronomers have gotten close to understanding how early stars formed during cosmic noon, more than 10 billion years ago.
NGC 346, shown here in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera , is a dynamic star cluster that lies within a nebula 200,000 light years away.
were like during the universe's early history, when it was only two to three billion years old and star formation was at its peak. Although various telescope missions have studied the Small Magellanic Cloud in the past, much remained to be understood. Meixner shared the early imaging results of NGC 346 using Webb on Wednesday at the 241st conference of the American Astronomical Society in Seattle.
So when astronomers used Webb's powerful near-infrared camera instrument to study NGC 347, they were surprised to discover"ribbons of gas and dust" in the interstellar medium. This finding is early proof that despite being low on metals, NGC 347 is dusty and has the building blocks necessary to form rocky planetary systems.
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