Cosmic Fireworks: Celebrate Independence Day with Webb’s Star Formation Spectacle

This new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope shows a young protostar in the process of forming within a fiery hourglass-shaped molecular cloud. Captured using the MIRI instrument, this scene reveals dynamic flows and bright areas caused by interactions with the surrounding gas and dust. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

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

NASAS ‘ The James Webb Space Telescope is celebrating US Independence Day with an observation of the protostar, hidden within the dark molecular cloud L1527 in mid-infrared light, as it evolves. This new vivid view highlights the behavior of this young object and traces the varying concentrations of gas and dust surrounding the protostar.

L1527, shown in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), is a molecular cloud hosting 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 an energetic, thick layer of gas and dust surrounding the protostar. The middle region, which appears 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 around the forming star

The cosmos appears to come alive with a crackling burst of pyrotechnics in this new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. Taken with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), this fiery hourglass marks the scene of a very young object in the process of becoming a star. A central protostar grows at the neck of the hourglass, accreting material from a thin protoplanetary disk, seen as a dark line.

Insights into Protostellar Development

The protostar, a relatively young object of about 100,000 years, is still surrounded by its parent molecular cloud, or large region of gas and dust. Webb’s previous observation of L1527, with the NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera), allowed us to peer into this region and revealed this molecular cloud and protostar in dark, vivid colors.

Dynamic outputs and molecular impact

Both NIRCam and MIRI show the effects of outflows, which are emitted in opposite directions along the protostar’s spin axis as the object consumes gas and dust from the surrounding cloud. These protrusions take the form of arc shocks in the surrounding molecular cloud, which appear as filamentary structures everywhere. They are also responsible for carving out the luminous hourglass structure within the molecular cloud, as they energize or excite the surrounding matter and cause the areas above and below it to glow. This creates an effect reminiscent of fireworks lighting up a cloudy night sky. However, unlike NIRCam, which mostly shows light reflected off dust, MIRI provides a look at how these emissions affect the region’s coarser dust and gases.

The areas colored here in blue, which comprise most of the hourglass, show mostly carbon molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons. The protostar itself and the dense blanket of dust and a mixture of gases surrounding it are represented in red. The red, firefly-like extensions are an object of the telescope’s optics (see image below).

This illustration demonstrates the science behind Webb’s diffraction patterns, showing how diffraction peaks occur, the influence of the main and fringe mirrors, and the contribution of each to Webb’s diffraction peaks. Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, Leah Hustak (STScI), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

In between, MIRI reveals a white area directly above and below the protostar, which does not show up as strongly in the NIRCam view. This region is a mixture of hydrocarbons, ionized neon, and coarse dust, indicating that the protostar pushes this material quite far from it as it eats up material from its disk erratically.

The evolving protostar and its future

As the protostar continues to age and emit energetic jets, it will consume, destroy, and dislodge much of this molecular cloud, and many of the structures we see here will begin to fade. Eventually, once it finishes accreting mass, this impressive display will end and the star itself will become more visible, even to our visible light telescopes.

This image of the nebula L1527, captured by the Webb Intermediate Infrared Instrument (MIRI), shows compass arrows, a scale bar, and a color key for reference.
The north and east compass arrows 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 relative to the directional arrows on a map of the earth (as seen from above).
The scale bar is labeled 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 infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible light colors. The color key indicates which MIRI filters were used during light collection. The color of each filter name is the color of visible light used to represent the infrared light passing through that filter.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Combining analysis from both near-infrared and mid-infrared images reveals the overall behavior of this system, including how the central protostar is affecting the surrounding region. Other stars in Taurus, the star-forming region where L1527 resides, are forming just like this one, 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 Hubble Space Telescope, is a large, space-based observatory optimized for infrared wavelengths. This enables it to look further back in time than any other telescope, observing the formation of the first galaxies and stars. Launching on December 25, 2021, JWST offers unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, allowing astronomers to study every phase of cosmic history throughout our universe. Its main capabilities include examining the atmospheres of exoplanets, observing distant galaxies and exploring star formation in detail.