James Webb captures ‘burning hourglass’ during star formation

space telescope James Webb revealed features that were once hidden from protostar inside a dark cloud L1527providing details of the start of a new star.

These glowing clouds in the star forming region of Taurus are only visible in infrared light, making them an ideal target for the Webb Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam).

star hourglass

protostar itself is hidden from view inside the “neck” of this hourglass shape. The edge-on protoplanetary disk is visible as a dark line in the middle of the neck. Light from protostars filters above and below this disk, illuminating cavities in the surrounding gas and dust.

The region’s most prominent features, blue and orange clouds in this representative color infrared image, outline the cavities that form when material is ejected from the protostar and collides with surrounding matter. The colors themselves come from layers of dust between James Webb and clouds. The blue areas are where the dust is the thinnest. The thicker the layer of dust, the less blue light can escape, creating pockets of orange.

Webb also discovers filaments of molecular hydrogen that were affected when the protostar ejected material from it. The jolts and turbulence prevent the formation of new stars that would otherwise form throughout the cloud. As a result, the protostar dominates space and captures most of the material. POT.

Despite the chaos it causes L1527, he is only about 100 thousand years old, a relatively young body. Given its age and its brightness in the far infrared observed by missions such as the infrared astronomical satellite, L1527 counts protostar class 0, the earliest stage of star formation. Such protostars, still shrouded in a dark cloud of dust and gas, have a long way to go before they become full-fledged stars. L1527 it does not yet generate its own energy through the nuclear fusion of hydrogen, which is an essential feature of stars. Its shape, mostly spherical, is also unstable, taking the form of a small mass of hot swollen gas somewhere between 20 and 40% of our Sun’s mass.

How protostar continues to accumulate mass, its core gradually shrinks and approaches steady nuclear fusion. The scene shown in this image shows that L1527 he does just that. The surrounding molecular cloud is made up of dense dust and gas, which are attracted to the center where the protostar resides. As the material falls, it twists around the center. This creates a dense disk of material known as an accretion disk that feeds material onto the protostar. As it gains mass and contracts, the temperature of its core will rise, eventually reaching the threshold at which nuclear fusion will begin.

The disk, visible in the image as a dark band in front of the bright center, is about the size of our solar system. Given the density, most of this material often sticks together: these are the beginnings of planets. Ultimately, this idea of L1527 it gives an idea of ​​what our sun and solar system looked like in its infancy. (Europe Press)

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