'It's incredibly rare to see a moment like this in the ocean': Camera drone captures moment humpback whale gives birth off Australian coast null Webb opens a Treasure Chest filled with stars Shared words with camera, like, rare Image: This NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope Picture of the Month takes us to a fantastical realm within our home galaxy, where piercing starlight and billowing winds sculpt dust clouds into inventive shapes. This scene is from the Carina Nebula, which lies just 7500 light-years away in the constellation Carina (the Keel). Spanning roughly 260 light-years, the nebula is home to an incredible collection of objects, including the Cosmic Cliffs revealed in the
f irst-ever Webb image release. The Carina Nebula is also the nearest high-mass star-forming region that allows astronomers to study the full range of star formation. This nebula houses some of the most massive stars in our galaxy as well as tens of thousands of protostars, offering a valuable opportunity to understand how stars shape their neighbourhoods. The feature highlighted in today’s image, aptly called the Treasure Chest, looks right at home in this celestial sculpture garden. The Treasure Chest is what’s known as a cometary globule. A cometary globule is an isolated cloud of gas and dust with a dense, dark head and a sweeping tail. These clouds often somewhat resemble comets, but th
e Treasure Chest looks distinctly like a wooden chest with its lid wide open. However, this chest doesn’t contain jewels or gold coins, but instead a compact cluster of young stars. These stars are responsible for the otherworldly glow coming from within the Treasure Chest, revealed by Webb’s sensitive Near-Infrared Camera ( NIRCam ). Researchers estimate that the Treasure Chest’s cluster contains about 70 stars, the most massive of which is a rare O-type star roughly 19 times as massive as the Sun. The star cluster is likely around 1.3 million years old, though earlier estimates found it to be as young as just 100 000 years old. Because of its youth, the cluster is still deeply embedded wit
