The James Webb Space Telescope captured a new view of the Treasure Chest cometary globule in the Carina Nebula, the European Space Agency reported. Located approximately 7,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Carina, the nebula spans roughly 260 light-years and serves as the nearest high-mass star-forming region available to study the full range of star formation.
The Treasure Chest is a cometary globule, an isolated cloud of gas and dust defined by a dense head and sweeping tail that resembles an open wooden chest. Webb's Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) peered through the cloud's interior, detecting a compact cluster of roughly 70 young stars that generate the formation's inner glow. Among these objects is a rare O-type star with a mass roughly 19 times that of the Sun.
Researchers estimate the embedded cluster is approximately 1.3 million years old, revising earlier calculations that dated it to 100,000 years. Because of its youth, the cluster remains deeply embedded within dusty clouds, with evidence showing many individual stars are surrounded by circumstellar discs. Radiation and starlight emitted by these newborn stars will eventually dissipate the surrounding cloud.
External radiation from massive neighbouring objects drives the globule's sculpted shape. Situated 39 light-years to the northwest sits Eta Carinae, the nebula's most luminous object, which contains at least two stars, including one 100 times more massive and 5 million times more luminous than the Sun. Additional radiation flows from the nearby Trumpler 16 cluster, which also contains several extremely hot, massive stars.
The data stems from Webb observing programme 5408, led by Principal Investigator M. Reiter, dedicated to investigating how young stars in the Carina Nebula collect gas from their surroundings and expel it through outflows.
