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This image was taken by Webb’s Mid-InfraRed Instrument of a region parallel to the massive protostar known as IRAS23385. IRAS 2A and IRAS23385 were targets for a recent research effort by an international team of astronomers that used Webb to discover that the key ingredients for making potentially habitable worlds are present in early-stage protostars, where planets have not yet formed.
These molecules found in the solid stage phase in young protostars are an indicator that the processes leading to formation of life may be more common than first thought. The complex organic molecules were first predicted decades ago before space telescopes observations inconclusively identified them. A team of astronomers using the Mid-InfraRed Instrument on the JWST as part of the James Webb Observations of Young ProtoStars programme have identified the COMs individually.
One of the target objects observed as part of this study was IRAS 2A, a low mass protostar. The science team are particularly interested because the system has similar characteristics as our own star, the Sun. It gives us a great test bed to explore the processes of the Solar System and Earth’s development.
The scientific community are now looking at the liklihood of transportation of the COMs to early planets as they form around the young stars. It is believed that their transportation as an ice are far more efficient to the protoplanetary disks than as a gas. It is quite likely that the icy COMs can be transported and inherited by comets and asteroids as the planets form.
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