Wherever the JWST looks in space, matter and energy interact in spectacular displays. The Webb reveals more details of these interactions than any other telescope because it can peer through the dense gas and dust that shrouds many objects.
In a new image, the JWST sees a young protostar that is only 100,000 years old.
The star is called L1527 and at this young age it is still in the molecular cloud that gave birth to it. This is one of the reasons why NASA built the JWST (with help from ESA and CSA). The telescope can peer through dust and gas to reveal the earliest stages of star formation.
This image was taken with MIRI, the Mid-Infrared Instrument. The young protostar is the heart of it all and is still growing. It is gathering mass from the protoplanetary disk that surrounds it. The disk is the small dark horizontal line in the center of the image.
The protostar is not a main sequence star, so it does not undergo fusion like the sun. There may be a small amount of deuterium fusion in its core, but it generates energy in a different way.
As the star’s gravity pulls the material closer, it compresses and heats up. More energy comes from shock waves generated by incoming material colliding with existing gas. This is the energy that lights up the star and its surroundings in the giant molecular cloud that spawned it.
As young protostars gather mass, they generate powerful magnetic fields. Combined with the star’s rotation, these fields push matter away from the star.
So, as a protostar gains mass, it also ejects some of it back into space in spectacular hourglass-shaped jets that emanate from the star’s poles. These jets create visible bow shocks in the matter around the star, which are the filamentary structures.
There are polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) in the star’s environment. They are organic compounds that are found throughout the universe and may have contributed to the origin of life. They glow blue in the image, including in the filamentary structures.
The red region in the middle is a thick layer of gas and dust around the young star, illuminated by the star’s energy. The white region between the red and the blue is a mixture of materials. There are more PAHs here, as well as ionized gases such as neon and other hydrocarbons.
This isn’t the first time the JWST has investigated L1527. In 2022, it observed the protostar with its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam).
This beautiful display of the interplay between matter and energy is temporary.
Over time, the protostar’s powerful outflows will strip much of the surrounding gas and dust, although the star will still have its protoplanetary disk. Eventually, the star will become a main-sequence star, easily visible without its veil of gas and dust. By this time, the star’s planetary system will have taken shape.
There are unanswered questions about protostar formation, and one of the JWST’s primary scientific goals is star formation. For example, astrophysicists don’t know exactly how and when fusion is triggered and a protostar becomes a main sequence star.
Astronomers know that powerful magnetic fields exist around protostars, but they don’t know exactly how they form or what role they play in the collapse and rotation of the star.
The JWST has made some progress on this front. It recently confirmed that jets from young stars are aligned due to the star’s rotation and magnetic fields, something that is supported by theory but not yet confirmed by observations.
There are also uncertainties about how binary stars form. Do they form in the same way as solitary stars? Why are so many stars binary?
The exact nature of the events that trigger star formation is also unclear. Shock waves from supernovae can trigger star birth, but what about other cases? Is it just a matter of density?
The answers to these questions will come in stages. With its ability to see more detail in the young stars and the clouds of swirling gas and dust that surround them, the JWST is making progress, one image at a time.
This article was originally published by Universe Today. Read the original article.