Webb Telescope Discovers Six Rogue Worlds Floating Within a Glowing Cosmic Cloud

Among the celestial sights within the nebula, Webb revealed newborn stars, brown dwarfs, and a planet-like object.

NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI via AP
A galaxy cluster captured by the James Webb Space Telescope. NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI via AP

Astronomers have made an exciting discovery with the James Webb Space Telescope, identifying six rogue planets.

The cosmic objects, which don’t orbit any stars, are slightly larger than Jupiter and provide valuable insights into the processes of star and planet formation in the universe.

The Webb telescope directed its gaze toward NGC 1333, a star-forming nebula located 960 light-years away in the Perseus molecular cloud, a larger region of gas and dust. In the turbulent nebula, gravity causes knots of gas and dust to collapse, leading to the birth of stars.

The space observatory captured a stunning, glowing image of the cosmic cloud. While previous images taken by the Hubble Space Telescope were obscured by dust, the Webb telescope, with its ability to observe in infrared light, was able to see through the dust and reveal the star formation process in unprecedented detail.

“We used Webb’s unprecedented sensitivity at infrared wavelengths to search for the faintest members of a young star cluster, seeking to address a fundamental question in astronomy: How light an object can form like a star?” senior study author, provost and astrophysicist at Johns Hopkins University, Ray Jayawardhana, said in a statement, CNN reported.

“It turns out the smallest free-floating objects that form like stars overlap in mass with giant exoplanets circling nearby stars,” he said.

Among the celestial sights within the nebula, Webb revealed newborn stars, brown dwarfs, and planet-like objects. The objects are all about five to ten times the mass of Jupiter, making them the lowest-mass objects formed by a process typically leading to star creation.


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