'We simply couldn’t have observed these ices without Webb.'
The new image shows James Webb's impressive capability for using its infrared imaging instruments to peer through dense dust and gas clouds to reveal the stellar nurseries beneath. Scientists used the starlight of the several stars scattered behind the cloud to take spectral readings of the elements present in the Chamaeleon I dark molecular cloud.
The new data revealed the coldest ices observed in the darkest regions of a molecular cloud to date. During their analysis, the team of researchers identified water ice, frozen methanol, ammonia, methane, and carbonyl sulfide.Ultimately, these frozen materials could lead to the formation of new stars and may even contribute to the formation of life in the distant cosmos.
"Our results provide insights into the initial, dark chemistry stage of the formation of ice on the interstellar dust grains that will grow into the centimeter-sized pebbles from which planets form in disks," explained Melissa McClure, an astronomer at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, and lead author of the new paper. "These observations open a new window on the formation pathways for the simple and complex molecules that are needed to make the building blocks of life.
"The ices show up as dips against a continuum of background starlight. In regions that are this cold and dense, much of the light from the background star is blocked, and Webb’s exquisite sensitivity was necessary to detect the starlight and therefore identify the ices in the molecular cloud." The new image adds to the growing list of stunning images taken by James Webb. Not only that, but it also adds to the wealth of data collected by the state-of-the-art space observatory that likely won't be surpassed for
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