Webb Discovers Huge Celestial Monsters!

Hey there, young astronomer! Guess what? The James Webb Space Telescope, which is like a super-duper spy telescope in space, has made an amazing discovery!

It found evidence of gigantic stars, so big that they’re like 10,000 times the size of our Sun! Can you imagine that? These supermassive stars were hiding way back when the universe was just a baby, only 440 million years after the Big Bang.

Gigantic Celestial Monsters

The scientists who found these stars called them “celestial monsters,” and they published their findings in a fancy journal. They found some special chemical fingerprints inside groups of stars called globular clusters, which are like little families of stars living close together.
These globular clusters are very old, almost as old as the universe itself. And here’s the interesting part: some stars in these clusters have different elements, like oxygen and nitrogen, even though they were born at the same time!
Scientists think these “celestial monsters” are the reason for this elemental variety. These huge stars burned really hot and created heavy elements, which then spread to other stars. But finding these stars is not easy because they lived fast and died young in big explosions called hypernovas.
To spot these ancient monsters, the scientists used the James Webb Telescope to look at a faraway galaxy called GN-z11. They found high levels of nitrogen around the stars, which suggests that only supermassive stars could have produced it.
Now, the scientists want to search for more clues in other galaxies and clusters to see if they find more of these cosmic giants. It’s like being a detective in space!
So, keep your eyes on the stars, my young astronomer friend. Who knows what other secrets the universe is hiding?

Watch a video

Embark on a captivating journey through Webb’s early concept designs, uncovering the criteria and key players involved.