Webb offers a rare look at how two young stars gather material, release powerful outflows, and slowly grow toward maturity.<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s Image of the Day from the James Webb Space Telescope reveals two young stars still gathering the material they need to grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Together, they form the system known as Herbig-Haro 46\/47.<\/p>\n
The stars<\/a> themselves are difficult to distinguish. They sit at the center of the bright red diffraction spikes, buried inside an orange-white patch of light.\u00a0<\/p>\n A thick disk of gas and dust surrounds them, feeding both stars as they develop.<\/p>\n The James Webb Space Telescope\u2060 captured the pair with its Near-Infrared Camera, or NIRCam.\u00a0<\/p>\n Webb is operated through an international partnership involving NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency<\/a>.<\/p>\n Stars that are still growing <\/p>\n Herbig-Haro 46\/47 lies about 1,470 light-years away in the constellation Vela. Although astronomers have observed the system since the 1950s,\u00a0<\/p>\n Webb<\/a> has produced its sharpest high-resolution portrait in near-infrared light. These wavelengths can pass through dust that blocks much of the visible light coming from the region.<\/p>\n Herbig-Haro 46\/47 is only a few thousand years old. That makes it extremely young by stellar standards, since stars take millions of years to form fully.<\/p>\n A star begins inside a cold cloud of gas and dust. Gravity draws part of the cloud inward, creating a dense central object called a protostar.\u00a0<\/p>\n More material collects in a spinning disk around it and gradually falls toward the center. The process raises the protostar\u2019s temperature and adds to its mass.<\/p>\n The two stars in Herbig-Haro 46\/47 remain deep within that stage. Webb cannot clearly separate them in the bright central patch, but the surrounding activity records how they have been feeding and changing.<\/p>\n Because the Sun is also a low-mass star, systems such as Herbig-Haro 46\/47 may help researchers reconstruct how it gathered material during its own formation.<\/p>\n Jets control stellar growth<\/p>\n Young stars do not keep all the material that moves toward them. Some of it gets thrown back into space in narrow jets launched from opposite sides of the system.<\/p>\n These outflows help carry away excess angular momentum, slowing the stars\u2019 rotation as they grow.\u00a0<\/p>\n They also limit how much mass the stars eventually retain. Without that release, material would have a much harder time continuing its inward journey through the rapidly spinning disk.<\/p>\n The orange lobes stretching across the image were created by older ejections. Newer material appears in thin blue threads running through them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Each burst leaves another mark, allowing astronomers to trace episodes of activity that happened at different points in the stars\u2019 short history.<\/p>\n A record written in glowing gas<\/p>\n The uneven shapes of the lobes offer clues about those earlier events. Some bursts may have carried more material, while others could have traveled at higher speeds.\u00a0<\/p>\n New jets have also caught up with older ejecta, pushing and reshaping the gas already in their path.<\/p>\n When this fast-moving material strikes surrounding gas, it creates shock waves. The collisions heat the gas and cause it to glow.\u00a0<\/p>\n These illuminated knots and arcs are the features astronomers call Herbig-Haro objects<\/a>.The system therefore preserves a rough record of its own formation.\u00a0<\/p>\n Researchers can study the positions, colors, and shapes of the glowing material to work out how the stars\u2019 outflows changed over time.<\/p>\n Webb peers through a dark cloud<\/p>\n A delicate blue cloud covers much of the scene. It is a dense region of gas and dust called a nebula, or more specifically a Bok globule.\u00a0<\/p>\n In visible-light observations, such clouds often appear as dark patches that hide the stars<\/a> behind them.<\/p>\n Near-infrared light gives Webb a much clearer view through the dust.\u00a0<\/p>\n The cloud still influences what appears in the image, however. On the lower left, ejected material runs into denser parts of the nebula. That interaction causes the outflow to spread, brighten, and take on a broader shape.<\/p>\n Distant galaxies fill the background<\/p>\n The field beyond Herbig-Haro 46\/47 contains stars and galaxies at many different distances.\u00a0<\/p>\n Nearby stars show Webb\u2019s familiar pointed diffraction pattern.\u00a0<\/p>\n White and pink spirals are remote galaxies<\/a>, while many of the smallest red specks may be far older galaxies whose light has traveled across much of the universe.<\/p>\n Over millions of years, the two young stars will consume or disperse much of the material around them.\u00a0<\/p>\n Their brilliant jets will fade, the dusty cloud will thin, and the stars will finally emerge from the environment that formed them.<\/p>\n Image Credit: NASA\/ESA\/CSA<\/p>\n \u2014\u2013<\/p>\n Like what you read? 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