The birth of a star

It’s not a Hollywood title: it’s an astronomical event. The James Webb Space Telescope showed its first images. It is a young star ejecting orange and blue dust, creating an hourglass shape around it. The birth of a star gives clues about the creation of our own solar system.

“This view of L1527 provides a window into what our Sun and Solar System were like in their infancy.” This was reported in a statement by NASA and the European Space Agency.

The birth of a star was spotted by the James Webb.
The birth of a star was sighted by the James Webb.

Table of Contents

Young star

The young star is known as protostar L1527. It is only 100,000 years old. It is in the earliest phase of star formation. And it is not yet capable of generating its own energy. It is noteworthy that the multicolored clouds are only visible in infrared light. The phenomenon has never been observed before.

In the published images it is seen that the star is hidden in darkness. It is covered by the edge of a spinning disk of gas at the neck of the particular clock it forms. Light spills from the top and bottom of the disk. Thus it illuminates the hourglass-shaped clouds. This black disk is the size of our solar system. It will feed the protostar in order for it to reach “the threshold for nuclear fusion to begin,” they detailed in the report.

The clouds are created by material ejected from the star colliding with surrounding matter. The color is due to the composition of the dust. The thinner is in the blue parts, the thicker forms the orange parts.

There are many impressive images we have of space thanks to Webb.
There are many stunning images we have of space thanks to the Webb.

Happy show

The protostar is observed in the Taurus molecular cloud. There are hundreds of nearly formed stars about 430 light-years from Earth.

The study is carried out with the James Webb telescope. It is considered the most powerful ever built. Scientists intend to study both the life cycle of stars and the life cycle of exoplanets. These are planets located outside the Earth’s solar system. Seeing the birth of a star is a happy part of the research.

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