Webb Telescope Spots Frozen Water and Molecules in Distant Molecular Cloud

Webb Telescope Spots , Frozen Water and Molecules, in Distant Molecular Cloud .

Gizmodo reports that NASA's Webb telescope has detected water ice and frozen complex molecules about 630 light-years from Earth in a molecular cloud.

According to the team, the freezing observations are the deepest, coldest yet seen in such a cloud.

A molecular cloud is a huge, dusty region of space that typically serve as stellar nurseries as they contain all of the ingredients necessary for stars to form.

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These clouds are also home to organic molecules.

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In 2022, scientists analyzing a molecular cloud at the center of our galaxy found evidence of the building blocks of RNA, a molecule shared by all living cells.

The most recent frozen molecular cloud contained water, methane, ammonia and complex molecules such as methanol.

The team's findings were published on January 23 in the journal 'Nature Astronomy.'.

Gizmodo reports that the observation of molecular clouds comes as part of Webb's Ice Age project.

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Our results provide insights into the initial, dark chemistry stage of the formation of ice on the interstellar dust grains that will grow into the centimeter-sized pebbles from which planets form in disks, Melissa McClure, Astronomer at Leiden Observatory in the Netherlands, via 'Gizmodo'.

We simply couldn’t have observed these ices without Webb.

Webb’s exquisite sensitivity was necessary to detect the starlight and therefore identify the ices in the molecular cloud, Klaus Pontodippan, Webb project scientist and a co-author of the research, via 'Gizmodo'