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A huge cosmic question mark has been spotted by the James Webb Space Telescope, leaving scientists scratching their heads. On Wednesday, the European Space Agency’s telescope team released an image that provided the most precise view yet of two young stars actively developing in the Vela Constellation, which is about 1470 light-years from Earth.
Herbig-Haro 46/47 are two brilliant stars that have been observed to be surrounded by a disk of material that “feeds” them as they expand over millions of years. However, in the background of the breathtaking deep-space view, there was something that looked like a large red question mark floating in the sky just below them. The nature of the mysterious object is unknown.
It’s most likely a faraway galaxy or a pair of galaxies that are interacting with one another. In a statement to Space.com, representatives from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, which oversees the telescope’s science operations, speculated that the two bodies’ interactions were likely responsible for the distorted question mark shape.
The officials claimed that the object’s red hue showed that it was likely located at great distances from Earth. It’s possible this is the first time in human history that the object has been seen.
The James Webb Telescope’s capabilities are so advanced that it can reveal distant objects at unimaginable distances. Using its high-resolution near-infrared imaging, it has detected galaxies 13.4 million light-years away that were already there barely 420 million years after the Big Bang.
That “This may be the first time we’ve seen this particular object,” the reps stated.
To determine its precise nature, further investigation is needed. There’s a lot of fresh research to be done because Webb has revealed so many previously unseen, extremely distant galaxies.