The arrival of a newborn baby is usually accompanied by dramatic screams which sound magical to the parents. It turns out that the birth of a new star in our universe is no different.
'Scream' From a Baby Star
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope has captured a stunning photo showing a young star "screamed" for the first time. The image features sprawling red jets of gas released by a newborn star or "protostar" in Herbig-Haro (HH) 212. It is located in the astronomical region 1,300 lightyears away in the constellation Orion and is only visible as infrared light.
The newborn HH212 star is 50,000 years old but is still considered very young in astronomical terms. It will eventually expand to reach the size of our Sun in the Solar System, which is currently around 4.5 billion years old.
For three decades, astronomers have been aware of the existence of HH212, but this new image captures unprecedented detail. It was first discovered in 1993 using the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility (IRTF) in Maunkea, Hawaii. Astronomers have often observed it since using increasingly large telescopes with better-infrared cameras and resolution. According to European Space Agency (ESA) senior science advisor Professor Mark McCaughrean, the image spans six wavelengths and is ten times sharper than any previous infrared image.
The appearance of the baby star has also been compared to a lightsaber from Star Wars. The captured image is around 2.3 lightyears wide, with "hidden" protostar and visible red "jets" and "outflows" of matter originating from it. It also shows "bowshocks" or waves where faster material has shunted slower ones. Around the red jets, the older stars and a distant galaxy can be found.
If we could somehow visit HH212, Professor McCaughrean suggests wearing infrared goggles since human eyes cannot see infrared light. Aside from that, the star could have entirely changed when we arrived since it is 1,300 lightyears away.
Despite gas and dust, astronomers conclude that the protostar at the heart of HH212 is relatively isolated, not surrounded by big, dense molecular clouds. Their conclusion stemmed from galaxies everywhere in the image, strewn across the image in the far distance. These will not be visible if there is a dense cloud.
Significance of Protostellar Jets
In regions such as HH212, clouds of dust and gas collapse due to gravitational force. This makes the clouds spin faster and hotter until a young star ignites the center. Any leftover material swirling around the newborn protostar comes together to form an accretion disc, a round flowing structure composed of dust, plasma, gas, and particles. Under ideal circumstances, the accretion disc will evolve to form the base material for forming planets, asteroids, and comets.
Protostellar jets are a significant component of the process of forming a star. They are responsible for removing excess angular momentum, which is critical to the growth of protostars. They also feed that angular momentum back into molecular clouds to control the formation of stellar cores and gravitational collapse.
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