JWST Captures Newborn Star Jets

The protostars at the heart of Herbig-Haro 46/47 are a mere few thousand years old, located approximately 1,470 light-years away in the constellation Vela. These young stellar objects are actively pulling in gas and dust from a surrounding disk, a process that will continue for millions of years until they fully form. These jets are not a continuous stream but are fired episodically. When the forming stars consume too much material from their accretion disk too quickly, they eject some of it in these powerful, oppositely directed outflows. This process helps regulate the stars' spin and final mass. The vibrant colors in the JWST image are not just for show; they reveal the presence of different materials. The fiery orange lobes are mostly made of outflowing molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide. The blue, thread-like structures closer to the central stars represent more recent, faster ejections. Traveling at speeds up to 155,000 miles per hour (250,000 km/h), the ejected material collides with the surrounding gas and dust, creating the bright shockwaves known as Herbig-Haro objects. These phenomena are transient, lasting only a few tens of thousands of years before they dissipate. Herbig-Haro objects were first recognized as a distinct type of emission nebula in the 1940s by astronomers George Herbig and Guillermo Haro. Before the discovery of the jet in HH 46/47 in 1977, one prevailing theory was that these objects were merely reflecting light from hidden stars. Studying these outflows provides a window into how low-mass stars like our own Sun may have formed. Previous observations with the Spitzer Space Telescope detected water ice, carbon dioxide ice, and organic molecules within the cloud surrounding HH 46/47, offering clues to the early chemical environment of a nascent solar system.