This new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a young protostar forming within an hourglass-shaped molecular cloud. Taken with the MIRI instrument, the scene reveals dynamic flows and bright regions caused by interactions with surrounding gas and dust. Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Webb’s latest mid-infrared image reveals the formation of a protostar, highlighted by color variations that detail its dynamic interactions with the surrounding molecular cloud.
L1527, seen in this image taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), is a molecular cloud that harbors a protostar. It lies about 460 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. The more diffuse blue light and filamentary structures in the image come from organic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), while the red in the center of this image is a thick layer of energized gas and dust that surrounds the protostar. The middle region, which appears white, is a mixture of PAHs, ionized gas, and other molecules. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Webb Space Telescope Captures Celestial Fireworks Around Star Formation
The cosmos appears to come alive in a burst of crackling pyrotechnics in this new image taken by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Taken with Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), this fiery hourglass depicts the scene of a very young object becoming a star. A central protostar is growing in the neck of the hourglass, accreting material from a thin protoplanetary disk, seen from the side as a dark line.
Overview of protostellar development
The protostar, a relatively young object about 100,000 years old, is still surrounded by its parent molecular cloud, or large region of gas and dust. Webb’s previous observation of L1527, with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), allowed us to observe this region and revealed this molecular cloud and protostar in vibrant, opaque colors.
Dynamic flows and molecular impact
Both NIRCam and MIRI show the effects of outflows, which are emitted in opposite directions along the protostar’s rotation axis as the object consumes gas and dust from the surrounding cloud. These outflows take the form of shock waves on the surrounding molecular cloud, which appear as filamentary structures. They are also responsible for sculpting the bright hourglass structure within the molecular cloud by energizing or exciting the surrounding material and causing the regions above and below to glow. This creates an effect reminiscent of fireworks lighting up a cloudy night sky. However, unlike NIRCam, which primarily shows light reflected from dust, MIRI offers insight into how these outflows affect the thicker dust and gas in the region.
The areas colored here in blue, which encompass most of the hourglass, show mostly carbonaceous molecules called polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The protostar itself and the dense blanket of dust and gas mixture surrounding it are shown in red. The red sparkler-like extensions are an artifact of the telescope’s optics (see image below).
This illustration demonstrates the science behind Webb diffraction peak patterns, showing how diffraction peaks occur, the influence of the primary mirror and spacers, and the contributions of each to Webb diffraction peaks. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
In between, MIRI reveals a white region directly above and below the protostar, which doesn’t show up as strongly in the NIRCam view. This region is a mix of hydrocarbons, ionized neon, and thick dust, indicating that the protostar is propelling this material quite far away from itself as it erratically consumes material from its disk.
The evolution of a protostar and its future
As the protostar ages and releases energetic jets, it will consume, destroy, and push away much of this molecular cloud, and many of the structures we see here will begin to fade. Eventually, once it has finished gathering mass, this impressive spectacle will end and the star itself will become more apparent, even to our visible-light telescopes.
This image of the L1527 nebula, captured by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), shows compass arrows, a scale bar, and a color legend for reference.
The north and east arrows on the compass indicate the orientation of the image in the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east in the sky (as seen from below) is reversed compared to the direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).
The scale bar is labeled in astronomical units (AU), which corresponds to the average distance between Earth and the Sun, or 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).
This image shows invisible mid-infrared light wavelengths that have been converted to visible light colors. The color legend indicates the MIRI filters used to collect the light. The color of each filter name corresponds to the visible light color used to represent the infrared light passing through that filter.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Combining the near- and mid-infrared analyses reveals the overall behavior of this system, including how the central protostar affects the surrounding region. Other stars in Taurus, the star-forming region where L1527 resides, form in exactly the same way, which could lead to the disruption of other molecular clouds and either prevent new stars from forming or catalyze their development.
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), often hailed as the successor to the
” data-gt-translate-attributes=”({“attribute”:”data-cmtooltip”, “format”:”html”})” tabindex=”0″ role=”link”>Hubble Space TelescopeJWST is a large space observatory optimized for infrared wavelengths, allowing it to peer further back in time than any other telescope and to the formation of the first galaxies and stars. Launched on December 25, 2021, JWST offers unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, allowing astronomers to study every phase of the cosmic history of our universe. Its key capabilities include examining the atmospheres of exoplanets, observing distant galaxies, and exploring star formation in detail.