Physicist from Innsbruck is looking for young stars

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As the first astrophysicist in Austria, Nadeen B. Sabha from the University of Innsbruck is leading a research project on the new James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). Together with an international team, she wants to detect very young stars in the center of our galaxy. Although the birth of stars near a black hole is highly unlikely and requires very special circumstances, there is evidence of their existence in the center of the Milky Way.

Previous observations have detected faint infrared sources in the immediate vicinity of Sagittarius A*, the supermassive black hole at the center of our galaxy. Although very high gas densities are needed to overcome the black hole’s strong tidal forces during star formation, there is growing evidence that new stars are being born in the heart of the Milky Way.

Nadeen Sabha of the Institute for Astrophysics and Particle Physics at the University of Innsbruck and her team will now test this hypothesis using the James Webb Space Telescope, which has recently been commissioned.

Warm phase in August and September
“We will aim the telescope at these faint sources at the center of our galaxy in August and September,” said the astrophysicist from Jordan. “With the new, highly sensitive telescope, it should be possible to detect these relatively low-mass newborn stars.”

If the research team can confirm that these light sources are in fact such young stars, it would mean that planets can also form in the inhospitable conditions near black holes in the cores of galaxies.

Additional research with ESO telescope
In addition to her studies with the Space Telescope, Nadeen Sabha is also studying star formation around the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. This high-resolution ground-based telescope can also be used to observe areas in the center of the galaxy that are too bright for the highly sensitive James Webb telescope.

Source: Krone

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