Aligned Protostellar Jets

Produced by the Space Telescope Science Institute’s Office of Public Outreach in collaboration with NASA’s Universe of Learning partners: Caltech/IPAC, Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, and NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

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Brilliant full-color images of galaxies, star clusters, and nebulas against the midnight black sky of the universe. 

 

Title: News From the Universe. 

 

Text: July 2, 2024. 

 

Aligned Protostellar Jets. Stars shoot rays of light across the universe. 

 

Text: For the first time, astronomers have captured a long-theorized element of the star formation process using NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. 

 

Text: Within the Serpens Nebula, a dense cluster of forming stars, Webb found a group of young stars blasting out jets of gas and dust, all aligned in the same direction. 

 

Computer-generated arrows denote the trajectory of the gas and dust. 

 

Similar outflow jets have been captured before, but never in a group all slanted to the same degree like this, from stars only 100,000 years old. 

 

The alignment of the outflows indicates that the sibling stars forming within the gas cloud are all spinning in the same direction, confirming a general theory of how stars form. 

 

Astronomers will be following up to learn the chemical contents of the region, some of which will likely find their way into exoplanets that will orbit these future suns. 

 

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This news was brought to you in part by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.