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JAMES WEBB SPACE TELESCOPE

Goddard Space Flight Center

James Webb
Space Telescope

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Rho Ophiuchi Video Tour

This video tours a portion of the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex, the closest star-forming region to Earth. The image was taken to celebrate the first anniversary of the start of science operations for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Transcript of Video.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, Greg Bacon (STScI)

Zoom in to Rho Ophiuchi

Travel to the Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex. The journey begins with a ground-based image by astrophotographer Akira Fujii, then transitions into a plate from the Digitized Sky Survey. Next a two-color image from the now-retired infrared NASA Spitzer Space Telescope appears, and then finally the video arrives at the James Webb Space Telescope’s image of the star-forming region.

The star-forming region captured in Webb’s image is small and not particularly active compared to other well-known star-forming regions. It is the region’s proximity to Earth (390 light-years) that allows Webb to capture it in such detail, emphasizing the structure of jets bursting from young solar-mass stars, and a dusty “cave” of glowing polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. Note: There is no audio.

Credits:NASA, ESA, CSA, Alyssa Pagan (STScI)