4 Min Read NASA’s Webb Reveals New Features in Heart of Milky Way Sagitarius C (NIRCam) Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and S. Crowe (University of Virginia). The latest image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a portion of the dense center of our galaxy in unprecedented detail, including never-before-seen features astronomers have yet to explain. The star-forming region, named Sagittarius C (Sgr C), is about 300 light-years from the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole, Sagittarius A*. Image: Sagitarius C (NIRCam) The NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument on NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s reveals a portion of the Milky Way’s dense core in a new light. An estimated 500,000 stars shine in this image of the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region, along with some as-yet unidentified features. A large region of ionized hydrogen, shown in cyan, contains intriguing needle-like structures that lack any uniform orientation. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, and S. Crowe (University of Virginia). “There’s never been any infrared data on this region with the level of resolution and sensitivity we get with Webb, so we are seeing lots of features here for the first time,” said the observation team’s principal investigator Samuel Crowe, an undergraduate student at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. “Webb reveals an incredible amount of detail, allowing us to study star formation in this sort of environment in a way that wasn’t possible previously.” “The galactic center is the most extreme environment in our Milky Way galaxy, where current theories of star formation can be put to their most rigorous test,” added professor Jonathan Tan, one of Crowe’s advisors at the University of Virginia. Protostars Amid the estimated 500,000 stars in the image is a cluster of protostars – stars that are still forming and gaining mass – producing outflows that glow like a bonfire in the midst of an infrared-dark cloud. At the heart of this young cluster is a previously known, massive protostar over 30 times the mass of our Sun. The cloud the protostars are emerging from is so dense that the light from stars behind it cannot reach Webb, making it appear less crowded when in fact it is one of the most densely packed areas of the image. Smaller infrared-dark clouds dot the image, looking like holes in the starfield. That’s where future stars are forming. Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument also captured large-scale emission from ionized hydrogen surrounding the lower side of the dark cloud, shown cyan-colored in the image. Typically, Crowe says, this is the result of energetic photons being emitted by young massive stars, but the vast extent of the region shown by Webb is something of a surprise that bears further investigation. Another feature of the region that Crowe plans to examine further is the needle-like structures in the ionized hydrogen, which appear oriented chaotically in many directions. “The galactic center is a crowded, tumultuous place. There are turbulent, magnetized gas clouds that are forming stars, which then impact the surrounding gas with their outflowing winds, jets, and radiation,” said Rubén Fedriani, a co-investigator of the project at the Instituto Astrofísica de Andalucía in Spain. “Webb has provided us with a ton of data on this extreme environment, and we are just starting to dig into it.” Image: Sagitarius C Features Approximate outlines help to define the features in the Sagittarius C (Sgr C) region. Astronomers are studying data from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to understand the relationship between these features, as well as other influences in the chaotic galaxy center. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Samuel Crowe (UVA) Around 25,000 light-years from Earth, the galactic center is close enough to study individual stars with the Webb telescope, allowing astronomers to gather unprecedented information on how stars form, and how this process may depend on the cosmic environment, especially compared to other regions of the galaxy. For example, are more massive stars formed in the center of the Milky Way, as opposed to the edges of its spiral arms? “The image from Webb is stunning, and the science we will get from it is even better,” Crowe said. “Massive stars are factories that produce heavy elements in their nuclear cores, so understanding them better is like learning the origin story of much of the universe.” The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency. Media Contacts Laura Betz – laura.e.betz@nasa.gov, Rob Gutro– rob.gutro@nasa.govNASA’s  Goddard Space Flight Center, , Greenbelt, Md. Leah Ramsay lramsay@stsci.edu , Christine Pulliam cpulliam@stsci.edu Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, Md. Downloads Download full resolution images for this article from the Space Telescope Science Institute. Related Information Star Formation Piercing the Dark Birthplaces of Massive Stars with Webb Our Milky Way Webb Mission – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/ Webb News – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/latestnews/ Webb Images – https://science.nasa.gov/mission/webb/multimedia/images/ Related For Kids What Is a Nebula? What Is a Galaxy? What is the Webb Telescope? SpacePlace for Kids En Español Ciencia de la NASA NASA en español  Space Place para niños Keep Exploring Related Topics James Webb Space Telescope Webb is the premier observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers worldwide. It studies every phase in the… Stars Overview Stars are giant balls of hot gas – mostly hydrogen, with some helium and small amounts of other elements.… Galaxies Our galaxy, the Milky Way, is typical: it has hundreds of billions of stars, enough gas and dust to make… Galaxies Overview Galaxies consist of stars, planets, and vast clouds of gas and dust, all bound together by gravity. The largest… Share Details Last Updated Nov 20, 2023 Editor Steve Sabia Contact Related Terms Galaxies Galaxies, Stars, & Black Holes Goddard Space Flight Center James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) Protostars Stars The Milky Way The Universe (NASA Breaking News) More