CNN — A giant space tarantula has been caught by a Webb — NASA’s highly sensitive James Webb Space Telescope, that is. Resembling a burrowing tarantula’s home line with its silk, it is home to the hottest and most massive stars known to astronomers, according to NASA. The Webb telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera, also called NIRCam, has helped researchers see the region “in a new light, including tens of thousands of never-before-seen young stars that were previously shrouded in cosmic dust,” according to NASA. The Webb telescope’s Near-Infrared Spectrograph (NIRSpec) captured a very young star doing that, which changed astronomers’ prior beliefs about that star. “Astronomers previously thought this star might be a bit older and already in the process of clearing out a bubble around itself,” according to NASA.

Source: CNN September 06, 2022 19:16 UTC