NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured an image of a young star, Herbig-Haro 211 (HH 211), that is much like how our sun would have looked in its infancy.
The Big Picture: The image, released by NASA on Sept. 14, captures the early stages of a star that will eventually grow to be much like our own sun.
* The young star, HH 211, is located about 1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus.
* Exhibiting only 8% of the Sun’s mass, this Class 0 protostar is less than 100,000 years old.
Visual Delight: The high-resolution image, complete with shades of blue and pink, illuminates the area around the newborn star, known as a Herbig-Haro object.
* The colorful outflow seen in the image results from gas jets ejected by the new star colliding with neighboring gas and dust.
Teams at Work: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has sophisticated infrared instruments, capable of documenting such celestial bodies which are often embedded within the gas from the molecular cloud in which they formed.
* The sensitive equipment aboard the Webb Space Telescope allows it to capture detailed images of these often elusive celestial bodies.
Online Buzz: The released image of HH 211 has spurred various interpretations from viewers on social media platform X.
* One user likened the image to “stretching when I wake up from a nap,” while another compared it to “the jet from a sci-fi particle cannon.”
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