(NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI. https://go.nasa.gov/3XujyyG)
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) imaged the nebula around the young protostar L1527, which is surrounded by a protoplanetary disk and is actively growing.
The nebula itself is similar in shape to a butterfly and is very young, its age does not exceed 100 thousand years.
To understand how the Sun and our planetary system formed, scientists are looking for and studying very young stars at different stages of their evolution
They study them from still-forming protostars to young stars surrounded by disks where planets are born.
The study of star-forming regions and young stars within them is one of the main scientific tasks of the JWST, which conducts observations in the infrared range.
The Webb is able to see the processes going on in dense gas and dust clouds, and observe clouds of cold gas and even exoplanets.
THE NEW OBSERVATION
A new target for observations for the telescope was a protostar in the dark gas and dust cloud L1527.
The formation is part of the Taurus Molecular Cloud and is located at a distance of about 456 light-years from the Sun.
This is a young stellar object of class 0/I, which represents the earliest stage of star formation, when the circumstellar shell of gas and dust has not yet dissipated.
The protostar has not yet entered the main sequence, and fusion reactions involving hydrogen do not yet occur in its core.
The age of the system is only about one hundred thousand years.
The JWST observed L1527 in the near infrared wavelengths using the NIRCam camera.
Around the protostar, there is a bipolar nebula, similar to an hourglass or a butterfly, which is formed from the outflows of matter from the star., which, in turn, collide and interact with the matter of the interstellar medium.
Inside the nebula, filaments of molecular hydrogen are visible.
The protostar itself is at the center of the nebula behind dust clouds, it continues to grow by accretion, and is surrounded by an edge-on protoplanetary disk.
The mass of the protostar is estimated at 0.2-0.4 solar masses.
The colors in the image are artificial and are responsible for the thickness of the dust clouds. Also, the colder the color, the thinner the layers of dust.
Sources:
- NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2022/nasa-s-webb-catches-fiery-hourglass-as-new-star-forms/
- ESA: https://www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Webb/Webb_catches_fiery_hourglass_as_new_star_forms
- Smithsonian: https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/james-webbs-captures-a-protostar-in-a-fiery-hourglass-180981149/
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