NASA’s Webb telescope peers into heart of Milky Way

(NewsNation) —  The most recently released image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows part of the dense center of our galaxy.

The image shows an estimated 500,000 stars shining in the star-forming region named Sagittarius C, which scientists say is about 300 light years from the Milky Way’s central supermassive black hole.

“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.”

Researchers say the Webb telescope has allowed astronomers to gather unprecedented information on how stars form. Webb’s program is led by NASA with the European Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency serving as partners.