RGB NIRCam symbol of Westerlund 1. Credit score: arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2411.13051
A global crew of astronomers has hired the James Webb House Telescope (JWST) to look at a supermassive Galactic open cluster referred to as Westerlund 1. Result of the observational marketing campaign, introduced in a paper printed Nov. 20 at the arXiv preprint server, yield essential insights in regards to the construction and houses of this cluster.
Open clusters (OCs), shaped from the similar massive molecular cloud, are teams of stars loosely gravitationally sure to one another. To this point, greater than 1,000 of them had been found out within the Milky Manner, and scientists are nonetheless searching for extra, hoping to seek out a lot of those stellar groupings. Increasing the record of recognized galactic open clusters and learning them intimately may well be the most important for making improvements to our working out of the formation and evolution of our galaxy.
It’s assumed that the majority big name formation takes position in large clusters of stars, referred to as celebrity clusters (SSCs). They’re very large younger OCs normally containing an overly massive collection of younger, large stars. The whole mass of an ordinary SSC exceeds 10,000 sun plenty.
Situated some 13,800 gentle years away, Westerlund 1 is a supermassive SSC with an estimated overall mass of fifty,000-100,000 sun plenty and a radius of about 3.26 gentle years. Subsequently, Westerlund 1 is assumed to be probably the most large recognized stellar cluster within the Milky Manner, and its age is estimated to be 5–10 million years.
A gaggle of astronomers led via Mario Giuseppe Guarcello of Palermo Astronomical Observatory in Italy, determined to take a better take a look at Westerlund 1. For this objective, they used JWST’s Mid-Infrared Tool (MIRI) and Close to Infrared Digicam (NIRCam).
“We provide JWST/NIRCam and JWST/MIRI observations of the supermassive big name cluster Westerlund 1. Those observations are particularly designed to unveil the cluster individuals right down to the brown dwarf mass regime, and to permit us to choose and find out about the protoplanetary disks within the cluster and to check the mutual comments between the cluster individuals and the encircling setting,” the researchers defined.
The observations printed a diffuse nebulosity surrounding the core of Westerlund 1. The majority of this nebular emission seems to be composed of droplet-like options pointing towards the teams of huge stars within the cluster.
Additional investigation of this nebulosity discovered that it incorporates an elongated trunk with a projected dimension of about 3.3 gentle years, pointing towards the middle of Westerlund 1. Additionally, it grew to become out that the nebular emission additionally features a small staff of cloud fragments wrapping across the staff of huge stars.
By way of inspecting the obtained photographs, the astronomers additionally detected prolonged shells surrounding some M-type supergiants in Westerlund 1. When it comes to 3 supergiants, those shells have an elongated construction in the other way with appreciate to the cluster middle, whilst in every other 3, most commonly slim outflows are noticed in explicit instructions.
Additional information:
M. G. Guarcello et al, EWOCS-III: JWST observations of the supermassive big name cluster Westerlund 1, arXiv (2024). DOI: 10.48550/arxiv.2411.13051
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