: NASA's Webb finds life’s building blocks frozen in a galaxy next door
Thu 27 Nov 2025; Using the James Webb Space Telescope’s (JWST) Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), researchers detected organic molecules with more than six atoms frozen in ice around a young star called ST6 forming in the neighboring galaxy, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The full galaxy is shown in the far-infrared image in the top right inset. The main image is the zoom-in on the star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud hosting the protostar ST6. It is a combination of mid-infrared data from Spitzer and visible (H-alpha) data from the 0.9-m Curtis Schmidt Telescope. The Webb’s MIRI image at a wavelength of 19 microns in the main inset shows the protostar ST6.
Read more Publ. Thu 27 Nov 2025