Image of Herbig-Haro 49/50 taken by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI)
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a stunning image of a “cosmic tornado” erupting from a young star.
The image shows a stream of hot gas from a newborn star known as a Herbig-Haro object, located approximately 625 light-years from Earth in the constellation Chamaeleon.
This amazing plume of gas, called Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50), is a composite of images captured by two of JWST's instruments, NIRCam (Near Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid Infrared Instrument). The colors in the image correspond to wavelengths of infrared light that are beyond human perception.
Herbig-Haro objects are bright, nebula-like structures that form when jets of ionized gas ejected by newborn stars collide with surrounding interstellar material at enormous speeds, reaching hundreds of miles per second. The shock wave of gas hitting this material heats it to enormous temperatures, causing it to glow in both visible and infrared wavelengths of light, creating the characteristic bright and bubbly appearance of Herbig-Haro objects.
These formations are typically located in star-forming regions — dense, gaseous regions where young stars are actively forming — and can evolve rapidly on astronomical timescales, often changing over the course of a few years or decades. These unusual cosmic structures were first noticed in the late 19th century, but were formally classified as a distinct class of objects by astronomers George Herbig and Guillermo Haro in the 1940s, giving them their name. Astronomers have now discovered more than 1,000 Herbig-Haro objects in various star-forming regions across our galaxy, including the magnificent, rainbow-hued HH 30, imaged by JWST in February.
Herbig-Haro 49/50 was first spotted by NASA's now-defunct Spitzer Space Telescope in 2006 and was nicknamed the “cosmic tornado” for its funnel-like shape. It resides in the Chamaeleon I cloud complex, which is one of the closest star-forming regions to Earth. Its environment is thought to be similar to that in which our own Sun formed more than 4 billion years ago.
Sourse: www.livescience.com
