An international team, including Western astrophysicists Els Peeters and Jan Cami, has found the destruction and re-formation of a large quantity of water in a planet-forming disk located at the heart of the Orion Nebula.
An international team, including Western astrophysicists Els Peeters and Jan Cami, has found the destruction and re-formation of a large quantity of water in a planet-forming disk located at the heart of the Orion Nebula.
This discovery was made possible by an original multidisciplinary approach combining observations from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) and quantum physics calculations.
The study, a part of the PDRs4All Early Release Science program and led by University Paris-Saclay Ph.D. student Marion Zannese, was published today in Nature Astronomy.
PDRs4All is one of 13 Early Release Science programs selected by NASA to demonstrate the capabilities of the JWST, bringing together an international consortium.
„It is so impressive that in just a few pixels of observations, and focusing on a few of the lines, we can actually figure out that you have an entire ocean of water being evaporated every month,“ said Peeters, co-lead investigator of PDRs4All and faculty member at Western’s Institute for Earth and Space Exploration.
