James Webb Space Telescope captures spectacular fireworks around embryonic star

James Webb Space Telescope captures spectacular fireworks around embryonic star

The flagship deep space observatory is providing scientists with valuable insights on the earliest stages of star birth.

L1527 as captured by Webb. (Image Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI).

New Delhi: The James Webb Space Telescope has turned its sensitive infrared gaze towards a protostar at a distance of 460 light years in the constellation of Taurus, designated as L1527. The image captures the earliest stages of star formation, with the protostar embedded within the neck of the fiery hourglass, growing on material swirling inwards from a circumstellar disc, which appears as a dark band in the centre of the image. The protostar is only about 100,000 years old, and is still surrounded by the molecular cloud, a vast region of gas and dust, which is the raw material from which the star is forming.

The outflows are emitted in opposite directions along the rotation axis of the star, or from its poles. The outflows are interacting with the surrounding molecular cloud and producing bow shocks, which are the filamentary features observed throughout the image. The polar jets are injecting energy into the surrounding molecular cloud, causing the regions above and below the star to glow. The areas in blue are primarily carbonaceous molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons or PAHs. The protostar itself and the dust and gas surrounding it are represented in red.

As the protostar matures, the jets will destroy and push away much of the molecular cloud, at least most of the portion that does not fall into the star, and the transient structures visible in the image will fade. There are other stars in the vicinity, within the same star forming region, that are nearly identical to L1527. There are a few objects with the characteristic six-pointed diffraction spikes of Webb, that appear only over the brightest and most concentrated sources of light, caused by light from the distant objects interacting with the internal support structure of the instrument.

Webb, and the life and deaths of stars

The infrared gaze of Webb is particularly useful for peering through obscuring clouds of gas and dust. While most frequencies are blocked out by these dark clouds, infrared light passes through easily, allowing Webb to investigate protostars in stellar nurseries, in the earliest stages of star formation, as well as the exotic stellar remnants such as neutron stars or pulsars within planetary nebulae, or dead stars surrounded by their own outer layers violently dumped in supernovae explosions. As a consequence, Webb is advancing human knowledge on the births and deaths of stars.