The Orion Nebula JuMBOs

The Orion Nebula JuMBOs

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The James Webb Space Telescope has observed over 100 free-floating objects of Jupiter-mass in the Orion Nebula. These Jupiter Mass Binary Objects have astronomers questioning how celestial objects form. Smithsonian Magazine shares what’s happening up there and what researchers are figuring out.

James Webb’s images revealed a cluster of nearly 150 free-floating objects, each with about the same mass as Jupiter, that astronomers can’t quite explain. Existing theories suggest it’s not possible for such small objects to form from the gas and dust within a nebula. Even more perplexing, many of the objects exist in pairs—had the JuMBOs been ejected from young stars’ orbits, that still would not explain how they paired up. The new Webb images show 42 such couplings.

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