Strange and unexpected tsunami-like starquakes －movements on stars' crusts similar to earthquakes we experience on our planet－have been revealed by the European Space Agency's Gaia space observatory.

Related video above: Hubble Just Captured the Largest Image of Ancient Galaxies EVER

The unusual starquakes are among multiple new discoveries made by Gaia, a mission launched in 2013 to create the "most accurate and complete multi-dimensional map of the Milky Way." On Monday, ESA released its third batch of data from the spacecraft, revealing fresh details on nearly 2 billion stars in our galaxy.

"Starquakes teach us a lot about stars, notably their internal workings. Gaia is opening a goldmine for 'asteroseismology' of massive stars," said Conny Aerts, a professor at the Institute of Astronomy at KU Leuven in Belgium and a member of the Gaia collaboration, a group of 400 researchers that work on the data from the project, in an ESA news release.

The agency described the stellar vibrations spotted by Gaia as "large-scale tsunamis" that changed the shape of stars. Gaia wasn't originally designed to detect the phenomenon but was able to discern strong movement on the surface of thousands of stars, including some where starquakes had seldom been seen before.

Previously, Gaia had detected radial oscillations－motions diverging from a common point－that caused some stars to swell and shrink periodically while keeping their spherical shape. The newly discovered oscillations were non-radial.

Gaia is uniquely positioned about 930,000 miles from Earth in the opposite direction from the sun. The spacecraft carries two telescopes that can scan our galaxy from a location called the Lagrange 2, or L2, point. At this point, the spacecraft is able to remain in a stable spot due to the balance of gravitational forces between Earth and the sun.

This also means that the spacecraft doesn't have any interference from Earth's light, and it can use the minimum amount of fuel to remain in a fixed position. The vantage point allows Gaia to have unfettered views and continuously scan our galaxy.

"With this incredible database we can build a comprehensive picture of the Milky Way and delve into its incredible history of formation, seeing direct evidence of both violent past interactions with other galaxies, and internal bouts of intense star formation along (the Milky Way's) spiral arms," said Nicholas Walton, a research fellow at Institute of Astronomy at University of Cambridge and member of the ESA Gaia collaboration, in a statement.

Much of the latest information about the Milky Way was revealed by Gaia's newly released spectroscopy data, resulting from a technique in which the starlight is split into its constituent colors, like a rainbow.

The data gathered by Gaia includes new information on the chemical composition, temperatures, mass, and age of stars, as well as the speed at which they move toward or away from Earth. Detailed information about more than 150,000 asteroids in our solar system and space dust — what lies between stars — was also released.

"Gaia's chemical mapping is analogous to sequencing the DNA of the human genome," said George Seabroke, a senior research associate for the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London, in a statement from the Royal Astronomical Society.

"The more stars we know the chemistry for, the better we can understand our galaxy as a whole. Gaia's chemical catalog of 6 million stars is ten times larger than previous ground-based catalogs, so this is really revolutionary. Gaia's data releases are telling us where stars were located and how they are moving. Now we also know what a lot of these stars are made of," Seabroke said.

About 50 scientific papers based on the Gaia data will be published on Monday; some will appear in a special issue of the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

"Unlike other missions that target specific objects, Gaia is a survey mission," said Timo Prusti, project scientist for Gaia at ESA.

"This means that while surveying the entire sky with billions of stars multiple times, Gaia is bound to make discoveries that other more dedicated missions would miss," Prusti said. "This is one of its strengths, and we can't wait for the astronomy community to dive into our new data to find out even more about our galaxy and its surroundings than we could've imagined."

The James Webb Space Telescope has given NASA its clearest view into deep space. The first image was revealed by NASA to President Joe Biden and the public on Monday at an event at the White House.

The Webb telescope will essentially replace the Hubble telescope as NASA’s primary view into deep space.

The first image released by NASA on Monday is a tease of what is to come. More images were set to be released on Tuesday.

Several astronomy enthusiasts were planning events throughout the U.S. on Tuesday to celebrate the release of the new images.

Take a look at the Webb Space Telescope's image of deep space here.

“As we near the end of preparing the observatory for science, we are on the precipice of an incredibly exciting period of discovery about our universe. The release of Webb’s first full-color images will offer a unique moment for us all to stop and marvel at a view humanity has never seen before,” said Eric Smith, Webb program scientist at NASA Headquarters.

“These images will be the culmination of decades of dedication, talent, and dreams – but they will also be just the beginning,” he said.

Video above: The James Webb Space Telescope provides ‘breathtaking’ new views of the Orion NebulaThe James Webb Space Telescope captured a highly detailed snapshot of the so-called Pillars of Creation, a vista of three looming towers made of interstellar dust and gas that's speckled with newly formed stars.The area, which lies within the Eagle Nebula about 6,500 light-years from Earth, had previously been captured by the Hubble Telescope in 1995, creating an image deemed "iconic" by space observers.The fact that new stars are brewing within the eerie columns of cosmic dust and gas is what earned the area its name.The Webb telescope used its Near-Infrared Camera, also called NIRCam, to give astronomers a new, closer look at the region, glimpsing through some of the dusty plumes to reveal more infant stars that glow bright red."Newly formed protostars are the scene-stealers," reads a news release from the European Space Agency. "When knots with sufficient mass form within the pillars of gas and dust, they begin to collapse under their own gravity, slowly heat up, and eventually form new stars."Since Hubble first imaged the area in the 1990s, astronomers have returned to the scene several times. The ESA William Herschel Telescope, for example, has also captured an image of the distinctive area of star birth, and Hubble created its own follow-up image in 2014. Each new instrument that sets its sights on the region gives researchers new insight, according to ESA."Along the edges of the pillars are wavy lines that look like lava. These are ejections from stars that are still forming. Young stars periodically shoot out jets that can interact within clouds of material, like these thick pillars of gas and dust," according to a news release."This sometimes also results in bow shocks, which can form wavy patterns like a boat does as it moves through water," it reads. "These young stars are estimated to be only a few hundred thousand years old, and will continue to form for millions of years."Webb is operated by NASA, ESA and the Canadian Space Agency. The $10 billion space observatory, launched last December, has enough fuel to continue snapping unprecedented images of the cosmos for about 20 years.Compared with the capabilities of other telescopes, the space observatory's powerful, massive mirror and infrared light technology can uncover faint, distant galaxies that are otherwise invisible — and Webb has the potential to enhance our understanding of the origins of the universe.Some of Webb's first images, which have been rolling out since July, have highlighted the observatory's capabilities to reveal previously unseen aspects of the cosmos, like star birth shrouded in dust.However, astronomers are also using the telescope's stable and precise image quality to illuminate our own solar system, and so far it has taken images of Mars, Jupiter and Neptune.

CNN (video above from ESA/Webb/NASA/CSA via CNN) —

Astronomers have detected a crucial carbon molecule in space for the first time using the James Webb Space Telescope.

The compound, called methyl cation, or CH3+, was traced back to a young star system located 1,350 light-years away from Earth in the Orion Nebula, according to NASA.

In the video player above: See images of what the Webb Telescope detected

Carbon compounds are intriguing to scientists because they act as the foundation for all life as we know and understand it. Methyl cation is considered a key component that helps form more complex carbon-based molecules.

Understanding how life began and evolved on Earth could help researchers determine if it's possible elsewhere in the universe. The highly sensitive capabilities of the Webb telescope, which views the cosmos through infrared light that is invisible to the human eye, is revealing more about organic chemistry in space.

The space observatory detected methyl cation in a protoplanetary disk, called d203-506, swirling around a young red dwarf star. These disks, largely made of gas and dust, are the leftover remnants of star formation. Planets are born in these large stellar halos, giving rise to planetary systems.

A study detailing the discovery was published Monday in the journal Nature.

The role of ultraviolet radiation

Red dwarf stars are much smaller and cooler than our sun, but the d203-506 system is still lashed with strong ultraviolet light from neighboring young, massive stars.

In most scenarios, UV radiation is expected to wipe out organic molecules, but the team actually predicted that the radiation could provide a necessary energy source that allows methyl cation to form.

After CH3+ forms, it leads to additional chemical reactions that allow more complex carbon molecules to build, even at low temperatures in space.

While methyl cation doesn't react efficiently with hydrogen, the most abundant molecule in the universe, it reacts well with a wide range of other molecules. Because of this chemical property, astronomers have long considered CH3+ an important building block of interstellar organic chemistry. But methyl cation wasn't detected in space until now.

"This detection not only validates the incredible sensitivity of Webb but also confirms the postulated central importance of CH3+ in interstellar chemistry," said study coauthor Marie-Aline Martin-Drumel, a researcher at the University of Paris-Saclay's Institute of Molecular Sciences of Orsay in France, in a statement.

Video below: The Webb Telescope recently detected organic molecules in a distant galaxy

The researchers detected different molecules in the protoplanetary disk of d203-506 than those found in typical disks, and they didn't detect any water, according to the study.

"This clearly shows that ultraviolet radiation can completely change the chemistry of a protoplanetary disk. It might actually play a critical role in the early chemical stages of the origins of life," said lead study author Olivier Berné, research scientist in astrophysics at the French National Centre for Scientific Research in Toulouse, in a statement.