2023-07-29 16:30:45
Published on July 29, 2023 at 4:25 p.m.
NASA’s James-Webb Space Telescope has captured the birth of two young stars known as Herbig-Haro 46/47.
Turbulent “baby stars”
On the photo taken in infrared light, we can distinguish them in the orange spot, at the intersection of the purple and red diffraction peaks.
Photo : NASA/ESA/CSA
They are buried deep in a disc of gas and dust which fuels their growth as they gain mass. The disk is not visible, but its shadow is visible in the two dark, conical regions that surround the central stars.
The most striking details are the two-sided lobes that fan out from the central forming stars, shown in bright orange. Much of this material was thrown up by these stars as they ingested and ejected the gas and dust immediately surrounding them for thousands of years.
An important snapshot for researchers
The discovery of the Herbig-Haro 46/47 stars is important to study because they are relatively young, that is, only a few thousand years old. Star systems take millions of years to form. Targets like this give researchers an idea of the mass accumulated by stars over time, which might allow them to model the formation of our own Sun, which is a low-mass star, and its system. planetary.
stars close to earth
The stars Herbig-Haro 46/47 lie just 1,470 light-years from Earth in the constellation Vela. This is a relatively close distance on the scale of the Universe. This explains why the shot offers so many details.
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