- Star at the centre of a region known as HH212 is spewing out dramatic jets of gas
- Like its lightsaber-shaped neighbour, HH212 is located in the constellation Orion
The arrival of a newborn baby is usually accompanied by dramatic screams – and it seems the birth of a new star in our great cosmos is no different.
A stunning new photo from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) shows sprawling red jets of gas coming from a newborn star.
This baby star or ‘protostar’ is at the centre of a curious astronomical region called Herbig-Haro (HH) 212, which is only visible as infrared light.
HH212 is located about 1,300 light-years away in the constellation Orion, much like its neighbour HH111, known for looking like a lightsaber from Star Wars.
Scientists think HH212’s star is no more than 50,000 years old – very young in astronomical terms – but it will eventually grow to become the mass of our sun.
In comparison, our own star – the sun – is around 4.5 billion years old and about halfway through its life.
HH212 has been known about for 30 years, but this new image shows the region in unprecedented detail.
‘Our new JWST image spans six wavelengths and is 10 times sharper than any previous infrared image,’ said Professor Mark McCaughrean, senior science advisor at the European Space Agency (ESA).
‘We first discovered HH212 in 1993 using the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) on Maunkea in Hawai’i.
‘We’ve observed it many times since on increasingly large telescopes and with better and better infrared cameras and better resolution.
‘Safe to say though, the JWST images blow all that away.’
In the new James Webb image, which is about 2.3 light years wide, we cannot see the protostar itself because it is ‘hidden’.
Instead, we see the pinky-red ‘jets’ and ‘outflows’ of matter that originate from the star and go in opposite directions.
There’s also ‘bowshocks’ – curved or pointed waves where faster material has crashed into slower material ahead of it.
Surrounding the redness of HH212 are older stars that are in later stages of their lifespan, as well as a distant galaxy.
The dazzling colour of the jets and outflows indicates the presence of molecular hydrogen, which has been energised by the ‘shocks’ in the outflowing material.
The new image was captured by the James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera), which sees the infrared wavelength range.
HH212, which is located near the ‘belt’ of the Orion galaxy, is almost completely invisible to the human eye because it emits infrared light.
So, even if we were somehow able to visit it we couldn’t see it without infrared goggles, according to Professor McCaughrean.
‘It’s 1,300 light years away, so even travelling at the speed of light, it’s going to have changed completely by the time you arrive,’ he said.
His comparison with older images of HH212 from the predecessors of JWST, including Hubble, show HH212 is moving.
‘Because the material is moving outwards from the protostar we can see the jet expand over time,’ Professor McCaughrean said.
In regions like HH212, clouds of dust and gas collapse under the force of gravity, spinning faster and faster and becoming hotter and hotter until a young star ignites at the cloud’s centre.
Any leftover material swirling around the newborn protostar comes together to form an accretion disc, a round flowing structure made of gas, plasma, dust and particles.
Under the right circumstances, the accretion disc will eventually evolve to form the base material for the creation of planets, asteroids and comets.
‘Despite all this gas and dust however, we know that the protostar at the heart of HH212 is a fairly isolated, not surrounded by big dense molecular clouds,’ Professor McCaughrean added.
‘How do we know that? Because there are galaxies everywhere in this image, strewn across the image in the far distance.
‘If there was a dense cloud, we wouldn’t see them.’
Dr. Thomas Hughes is a UK-based scientist and science communicator who makes complex topics accessible to readers. His articles explore breakthroughs in various scientific disciplines, from space exploration to cutting-edge research.