Almost transparent, tentacle-like shapes also appear to be drifting behind it, like streamers in a cosmic wind. Only a few threads of semi-transparent wisps of material point toward the larger lobe. Glance toward the upper right to pick out a blobby, almost sponge-shaped ejecta that appears separate from the larger lobe. There are two other areas to look at to compare the asymmetry of the two lobes. As ejected material rams into the nebula on the lower left, there is more opportunity for the jets to interact with molecules within the nebula, causing them both to light up. This nebula is significant – its presence influences the shapes of the jets shot out by the central stars. The nebula’s edges appear in a soft orange outline, like a backward L along the right and bottom. In Webb’s crisp near-infrared image, we can see into and through the gauzy layers of this cloud, bringing a lot more of Herbig-Haro 46/47 into focus, while also revealing a deep range of stars and galaxies that lie well beyond it. When viewed mainly in visible light, it appears almost completely black – only a few background stars peek through. This is a region of dense dust and gas, known both as a nebula and more formally as a Bok globule. Now, turn your eye to the second most prominent feature: the effervescent blue cloud. Imagine a band tightly tied around the stars.) (The disk of gas and dust feeding the stars is small. Ejections regulate how much mass the stars ultimately gather. Lighter blue, curly lines also emerge on the left, near the central stars, but are sometimes overshadowed by the bright red diffraction spike.Īll of these jets are crucial to star formation itself. They are disconnected at points, and end in a remarkable uneven light purple circle in the thickest orange area. Along the right side, these ejections make clearer wavy patterns. ![]() They run just below the red horizontal diffraction spike at 2 o’clock. The stars’ more recent ejections appear in a thread-like blue. Why? It’s likely related to how much material fell onto the stars at a particular point in time. ![]() Some jets send out more material and others launch at faster speeds. ![]() 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. When material from more recent ejections runs into older material, it changes the shape of these lobes. 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. The most striking details are the two-sided lobes that fan out from the actively forming central stars, represented in fiery orange. The disk is not visible, but its shadow can be seen in the two dark, conical regions surrounding the central stars. They are buried deeply in a disk of gas and dust that feeds their growth as they continue to gain mass. To find them, trace the bright pink and red diffraction spikes until you hit the center: The stars are within the orange-white splotch. 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.
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