Pic of the Week: Herbig-Haro 46/47

Image (Credit): JWST image showing the formation of a pair of new stars. (NASA, ESA, CSA. Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI))

This week’s image is from the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). It shows the formation of new stars 1,470 light-years away that will take millions of years to form.

Here is a partial description of what you are seeing from NASA (visit the link for the full desciption):

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the “antics” of a pair of actively forming young stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, in high-resolution near-infrared light. To find them, trace the bright pink and red diffraction spikes until you hit the center: The stars are within the orange-white splotch. They are buried deeply in a disk of gas and dust that feeds their growth as they continue to gain mass. The disk is not visible, but its shadow can be seen in the two dark, conical regions surrounding the central stars.

The most striking details are the two-sided lobes that fan out from the actively forming central stars, represented in fiery orange. Much of this material was shot out from those stars as they repeatedly ingest and eject the gas and dust that immediately surround them over thousands of years.

When material from more recent ejections runs into older material, it changes the shape of these lobes. This activity is like a large fountain being turned on and off in rapid, but random succession, leading to billowing patterns in the pool below it. Some jets send out more material and others launch at faster speeds. Why? It’s likely related to how much material fell onto the stars at a particular point in time.