Panning across The Serpens Nebula | James Webb Space Telescope

Panning across The Serpens Nebula | James Webb Space Telescope

For the first time, a phenomenon astronomers have long hoped to image directly has been captured by the NASA/European Space Agency/Canadian Space Agency James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-InfraRed Camera (NIRCam). In this image of the Serpens Nebula, the discovery lies in the northern area of this young, nearby star-forming region.

Astronomers have found an intriguing group of protostellar outflows, formed when jets of gas spewing from newborn stars collide with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. Typically these objects have a variety of orientations within one region. Here, however, they are all slanted in the same direction, to the same degree, like sleet pouring down during a storm.

The discovery of these aligned objects, made possible only by Webb’s exquisite spatial resolution and sensitivity at near-infrared wavelengths, is providing information about the fundamentals of how stars are born.

The Serpens Nebula, located 1,300 light-years from Earth, is home to a particularly dense cluster of newly forming stars (about 100,000 years old), where a number will eventually grow to the mass of our Sun. Webb’s image of this nebula revealed a grouping of aligned protostellar outflows (seen in the top left). The jets are identified by bright clumpy streaks that appear red. These are shock waves caused when the jet hits the surrounding gas and dust.

Throughout this image filaments and wisps of distinct hues represent reflected starlight from still-forming protostars within the cloud. There is dust in front of that reflection and it appears here in an orange, diffuse shade.

Image Description: A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. The upper left corner of the image is filled with mostly orange dust and within that orange dust are several small red plumes of gas that extend from the top left to the bottom right, at the same angle. The center of the image is filled with mostly blue gas. At the center, there is one particularly bright star that has an hourglass shadow above and below it. To the right of that is what looks like a vertical eye-shaped crevice with a bright star at the center. The gas to the right of the crevice is a darker orange.

Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, K. Pontoppidan (NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory), J. Green (Space Telescope Science Institute)

Duration: 30 seconds

Release Date: June 20, 2024

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