Astronomers use James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) They have observed a strange stellar phenomenon for the first time ever: a cluster of young stars streaking the walls of their nursery in apparently coordinated jets of high-velocity gas. Surprisingly, they all point in the same direction.
The chaotic discovery provides the first direct picture of a long-studied phenomenon called protostellar jets, huge jets of gas released by newborn stars, which collide with and charge material in the molecular clouds of gas surrounding them. But it also reveals a puzzling new mystery: Why do so many of the newly discovered jets appear to be lined up in exactly the same direction, even though they come from widely separated stars?
Observations described in a new study in Astrophysical JournalIt could reveal important new information about how stars form and how they evolve.
“Astronomers have long assumed that when clouds collapse to form stars, the stars will tend to rotate in the same direction,” says the lead researcher. Klaus Pontoppidan NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said statement. “However, this has never been seen directly before. These compact, elongated structures are a historical record of the fundamental way stars are born.”
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Newly imaged young stars share a nursery in the Main Serpent Nebula — a vast, sinuous cloud of star-forming gas located in the constellation Serpent, about 1,300 light-years from Earth, according to NASA. Astronomers observed the nebula using JWST’s powerful Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), noting trails of hot, ionized gas hurtling through the star-forming cloud.
Observations revealed the presence of at least 20 newborn stars in the region, which were actively emitting protostellar outbursts. One cluster of 12 stars (seen in the upper left corner of the James Webb Space Telescope image) caught the team’s attention. The blazing jets from these stars were all pointed in roughly the same direction, “like falling frost during a storm,” according to a NASA statement. The team estimated that the outflows are relatively recent, starting between 200 and 1,400 years ago.
We have never seen such perfectly consistent flows before, and they are unlikely to be the result of random chance. According to the researchers, the group of 12 jet stars likely formed at roughly the same time as each other, and along the same dense filaments of gas. A strong magnetic field defines the boundaries of these star-forming filaments, and may also be responsible for directing the angle of the protostellar jets seen shooting out there. Over time, this effect weakens as interactions with other objects slightly affect the rotation axes of individual stars, redirecting the jets. This drift over time could explain why astronomers have never seen such a perfect alignment before.
Further study of these coordinated flows could reveal new details about how stars are born. Next, the researchers plan to study Serpens Main using JWST’s Near-Infrared Spectrometer (NIRSpec) instrument to better understand the chemical composition of the vast stellar nursery — which could reveal how solar systems, like ours, are transported from stars to planetesimals.
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