Huge Protostellar Jet

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.

Video imagery:

Webb near-infrared image of protostellar jets in Sh2-284: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Yu Cheng (NAOJ); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

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[00:00:00.51] A white line moves through colorful images of space.

 

[00:00:05.36] Title: News from the Universe.

 

[00:00:11.59] Text: October 10, 2025. Huge Proto-stellar Jet.

 

[00:00:19.78] NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has detected a forming star at the edge of the Milky Way galaxy that is blasting out huge plasma jets.

 

[00:00:32.16] The central proto-star already weighs ten times as much as our Sun.

 

[00:00:40.62] The plasma jets are moving at hundreds of thousands of miles per hour and stretch across 8 light-years of space.

 

[00:00:51.67] While hundreds of twin jets like these have been seen before during the birth of stars, those have typically been produced by smaller, lower-mass stars.

 

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[00:01:03.81] Webb's observation of this young, high-mass star indicates that the jets scale up with the mass of the star powering them.

 

[00:01:16.25] This news was brought to you in part by the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland.