Celebrate Independence Day with Webb’s Star Formation Spectacle

Webb’s latest mid-infrared image reveals the protostar’s formation, highlighted by color variations that detail its dynamic interactions with the surrounding molecular cloud.

NASA‘with The James Webb Space Telescope celebrates US Independence Day by observing a protostar hidden inside the dark molecular cloud L1527 in mid-infrared light as it evolves. This bright new view highlights the behavior of this young object, tracing the varying concentrations of gas and dust surrounding the protostar.

L1527, shown in this MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, is a molecular cloud that harbors a protostar. It is located about 460 light years from Earth in the constellation Taurus. The more diffuse blue light and filamentous structures in the image come from organic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs), while the red in the center of this image is the charged thick layer of gas and dust that surrounds the protostar. The area in between, shown in white, is a mixture of PAHs, ionized gas and other molecules. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

The Webb Space Telescope captures the celestial fireworks display around a forming star

The cosmos seems to come alive with a crackling explosion of pyrotechnics in this new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. This fiery hourglass captured by Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) shows the scene of a very young object becoming a star. The central protostar grows in the mouth of the hourglass, accreting material from the thin protoplanetary disk, seen from the side as dark lines.

Insights into protostellar evolution

The protostar, a relatively young object of about 100,000 years old, is still surrounded by its parent molecular cloud, or large region of gas and dust. Webb’s previous NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) observation of L1527 gave us a peek into the region, revealing this molecular cloud and protostar in opaque, glowing colors.

Dynamic effluxes and molecular impact

Both NIRCam and MIRI show the effects of outflows that are emitted in opposite directions along the rotation axis of the protostar as the object consumes gas and dust from the surrounding cloud. These eruptions take the form of shock waves into the surrounding molecular cloud, which throughout their extent appear as fibrous structures. They are also responsible for carving out the clear hourglass structure in the molecular cloud as they energize or excite the surrounding matter, causing the regions above and below it to glow. This creates an effect reminiscent of fireworks lighting up a cloudy night sky. Unlike NIRCam, which mostly shows light that bounces off dust, MIRI provides a look at how these outflows affect the densest dust and gases in the region.

The areas colored blue here, which comprise most of the hourglass, show mostly carbonaceous molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The protostar itself and the dense dust mantle 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 shows the science behind Webb diffraction tips, showing how diffraction tips occur, the effect of the primary mirror and struts, and the contributions of each to Webb diffraction tips. Acknowledgments: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Meanwhile, MIRI reveals a white region directly above and below the protostar that does not show up as strongly in the NIRCam view. This region is a mixture of hydrocarbons, ionized neon, and dense dust, indicating that the protostar is propelling this matter quite far apart as it consumes material from its disk in a disorderly manner.

The evolving Protostar and its future

As the protostar continues to age and release energy jets, it consumes, destroys, and pushes away much of this molecular cloud, and many of the structures we see here begin to disappear. Eventually, as it finishes accreting mass, this impressive display ends and the star itself becomes more apparent, even to our visible-light telescopes.

This Webb Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI) image of the nebula L1527 shows the compass arrows, scale and color key for reference.
The north and east arrows of the compass show the orientation of the image in the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east in the sky (viewed from below) is reversed relative to the directional arrows on the earth map (viewed from above).
The scale is indicated in astronomical units (AU), which is the average distance between Earth and the Sun, or 93 million miles (150 million kilometers).
This image shows invisible mid-infrared wavelengths of light that have been converted into visible light colors. The colored button shows which MIRI filters were used when collecting the light. The color of each filter name is the visible light color used to represent the infrared light passing through that filter.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Combining near- and mid-infrared analyzes 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, are forming in just this way, which could disrupt other molecular clouds and either prevent new stars from forming or catalyze their evolution.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), often hailed as the telescope’s successor Hubble Space Telescope, is a large space observatory optimized for infrared wavelengths. This allows it to look further back in time than any other telescope and observe the formation of the first galaxies and stars. Launched on December 25, 2021, JWST provides unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, allowing astronomers to study every phase of cosmic history in our universe. Its key capabilities include probing the atmospheres of exoplanets, observing distant galaxies, and studying star formation in detail.