Skip to main content

See a new star being born in stunning James Webb image

The James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of the birth of a new star. As dust and gas clump together and eventually collapses under the force of gravity, it becomes a protostar: the core of a new star, rotating and forming a magnetic field, throwing off material in two dramatic jets of gas.

This process is on display in this image of the cloud L1527, taken using Webb’s NIRCam instrument. Looking in the infrared, this camera can capture the clouds of material given off by the protostar which would be invisible to the human eye.

The protostar L1527, shown in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
The protostar L1527, shown in this image from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, is embedded within a cloud of material that is feeding its growth. Material ejected from the star has cleared out cavities above and below it, whose boundaries glow orange and blue in this infrared view. The upper central region displays bubble-like shapes due to stellar ‘burps,’ or sporadic ejections. Webb also detects filaments made of molecular hydrogen that has been shocked by past stellar ejections. Intriguingly, the edges of the cavities at the upper left and lower right appear straight, while the boundaries at the upper right and lower left are curved. The region at the lower right appears blue, as there’s less dust between it and Webb than the orange regions above it. NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI, J. DePasquale (STScI)

In the image, the protostar itself can’t be seen but is located right in the center of the hourglass shape. That shape is formed from clouds of dust and gas which are shaped by the jets given off by the protostar, with thinner areas of dust appearing blue and thicker areas appearing orange. In addition to the dust, there are also filaments of hydrogen gas visible, shaped by ejections from the protostar.

Researchers estimate that this protostar is around 100,000 years old, making it a baby by stellar standards. For comparison, our sun is around 4.6 billion years old and is expected to live to around 9 to 10 billion years of age. The protostar is also smaller than our sun, at between 20 to 40% of its mass, and most importantly it is not yet producing heat through fusion.

The protostar will continue gathering dust and gas and increasing in mass. As this material falls into the protostar due to gravity, it heats up because of friction. To start fusing hydrogen, the protostar needs to reach a core temperature of around 10 million degrees Kelvin. At this temperature, the gases become plasma, and hydrogen atoms start fusing together to form helium, releasing energy in the form of heat and light. This is the point at which a protostar becomes a main sequence star.

Some of the material left around the protostar could even become a planet one day. “Ultimately, this view of L1527 provides a window onto what our Sun and Solar System looked like in their infancy,” Webb scientists write.

Editors' Recommendations

Georgina Torbet
Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…
James Webb observes merging stars creating heavy elements
This image from Webb’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) instrument highlights GRB 230307A’s kilonova and its former home galaxy among their local environment of other galaxies and foreground stars. The neutron stars were kicked out of their home galaxy and travelled the distance of about 120,000 light-years, approximately the diameter of the Milky Way galaxy, before finally merging several hundred million years later.

In its earliest stages, the universe was composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. All of the other, heavier elements that make up the universe around us today were created over time, and it is thought that they were created primarily within stars. Stars create heavy elements within them in the process of fusion, and when these stars reach the ends of their lives they may explode in supernovas, spreading these elements in the environment around them.

That's how heavier elements like those up to iron are created. But for the heaviest elements, the process is thought to be different. These are created not within stellar cores, but in extreme environments such as the merging of stars, when massive forces create exceedingly dense environments that forge new elements.

Read more
Researchers discover a 320-mph jet stream around Jupiter’s equator
This image of Jupiter from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows stunning details of the majestic planet in infrared light. In this image, brightness indicates high altitude. The numerous bright white "spots" and "streaks" are likely very high-altitude cloud tops of condensed convective storms. Auroras, appearing in red in this image, extend to higher altitudes above both the northern and southern poles of the planet. By contrast, dark ribbons north of the equatorial region have little cloud cover. In Webb’s images of Jupiter from July 2022, researchers recently discovered a narrow jet stream traveling 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour) sitting over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks.

The James Webb Space Telescope might be best known for its study of extremely distant galaxies, but it is also used for research on targets closer to home, like planets within our solar system. Last year, the telescope captured a stunning image of Jupiter as seen in the infrared wavelength, and now scientists who have been working on this data have published some of their findings about the planet -- including a brand-new feature that they identified in its atmosphere.

This image of Jupiter from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) shows stunning details of the majestic planet in infrared light. In Webb’s images of Jupiter from July 2022, researchers recently discovered a narrow jet stream traveling 320 miles per hour (515 kilometers per hour) sitting over Jupiter’s equator above the main cloud decks. NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Ricardo Hueso (UPV), Imke de Pater (UC Berkeley), Thierry Fouchet (Observatory of Paris), Leigh Fletcher (University of Leicester), Michael H. Wong (UC Berkeley), Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Read more
Gaia discovers half a million new stars in the epic Omega Centauri cluster
ESA's star-surveying Gaia mission has released a treasure trove of new data as part of its ‘focused product release’. As part of this data release Gaia explored Omega Centauri, the largest globular cluster that can be seen from Earth and a great example of a ‘typical’ cluster.

This week saw the release of a treasure trove of data from the European Space Agency's (ESA) Gaia mission, a space-based observatory that is mapping out the Milky Way in three dimensions. The newly released data includes half a million new stars and details about more than 150,000 asteroids within our solar system.

The overall aim of the Gaia mission is to create a full 3D map of our galaxy that includes not only stars, but also other objects like planets, comets, asteroids, and more. The mission was launched in 2013 and the data it collected is released in batches every few years, with previous releases including data on topics like the positions of over 1.8 billion stars.

Read more