JWST shows surprising violence in a young star system’s birth

Just 450 light-years away, new stars are being born.

This wide-field image only encapsulates a portion of the giant Taurus Molecular Cloud, which extends for nearly 14 degrees across the sky on its longest axis. Just 430-450 light-years away, it may be the closest large star-forming region to Earth.

The Taurus Molecular Cloud has thousands of stellar masses worth of cold, collapsing gas.

This far-infrared view of the Taurus Molecular Cloud showcases cool dust grains that emit at only 10-30 K above absolute zero. The brightest, reddest regions here showcase where star-formation is most intense inside. This field-of-view spans 13.8° by 7.3°, capturing the known entirety of the molecular cloud complex.

Inside the densest, most massive regions, newborn stars are already thriving.

This amateur astronomy image of dark nebula LDN 1551 showcases the cloud of ionized gas within it: Sharpless 239. Many protostars, surrounded by dusty disks, are located inside, along with numerous Herbig-Haro objects.

Many young stellar systems have protoplanetary disks: the birthplace of planets.

This image, from ALMA, shows the protoplanetary disk around HL Tauri. The gaps within the disk correspond to the locations of newly-forming planets, and emit jets and outflows (not shown) associated with Herbig-Haro 150: part of the same system.

Also, some young stars exhibit energetic outflows: Herbig-Haro objects.

Ultra-hot, young stars can sometimes form jets, like this Herbig-Haro object in the Orion Nebula, just 1,500 light years away from our position in the galaxy. The radiation and winds from young, massive stars can impart enormous kicks to the surrounding matter, where we find organic molecules as well. These hot regions of space emit much greater amounts of energy than our Sun does, heating up objects in their vicinity to greater temperatures than the Sun can.

One such remarkable object happens to be oriented perfectly edge-on to us: Herbig-Haro 30 (HH30).

This three-panel image shows evolution in the structure of the jets, outflows, and optically-bright portion of the region above and below the central dust disk of Herbig-Haro 30. These images span from 1995 through 2000, and were acquired with the Hubble Space Telescope.

HH30 has been imaged many times, including by the Hubble Space Telescope.

This Hubble composite shows the Herbig-Haro object HH30 with two jets streaming away, perpendicular to the young, dusty disk whose material blocks the light from the central, obscured young star.

However, many additional features can be seen by viewing HH30 in other, longer wavelengths of light.

This near-infrared view of Herbig-Haro object HH30, from JWST, showcases the stellar winds and jets of gas around the most perfectly edge-on Herbig-Haro object known. The extended and distorted tail of tiny dust grains is highlighted here.

Near-infrared imaging, provided by JWST, reveals conical outflows alongside the two jets.

This mid-infrared view of Herbig-Haro object HH30 comes from JWST’s MIRI instrument, and highlights the presence and distribution of very small dust grains: extending high out of the plane of the protoplanetary disk itself, the dust extends for more than 100 AU above and below the disk, rivaling the extent of the disk itself.

Mid-infrared views, also from JWST, showcase high, wide columns of tiny-grained dust surrounding this object.

This ALMA view of the protoplanetary disk surrounding Herbig-Haro object HH30 shows an extent to the large, millimeter-sized dust grains that only rises about ~1 AU above or below the plane of the disk itself. It is thought that these larger dust grains are required for the formation of massive planetary and protoplanetary objects.

Meanwhile, the longest-wavelength views come from ALMA, which probes the distribution of large, millimeter-sized dust grains.

This 5-panel animation of the same object, Herbig-Haro object HH30, at the same scale but in different wavelengths. Hubble’s optical views fade to JWST’s NIRCam views, then JWST’s MIRI views, and finally ALMA’s millimeter-wavelength views. The final panel is a composite of JWST NIRCam and MIRI data.

From combining all of this data, we can determine many remarkable facts.

This composite NIRCam and MIRI image from JWST shows a variety of features concerning Herbig-Haro object HH30. Jets of material are ejected perpendicular to a central, edge-on, dusty disk, with small-grained and reflective features seen above and below the plane of the disk itself. Potential spiral features, a tail, and conical outflows all appear here.

Small dust grains are fully mixed, vertically, while larger ones remain in a thin, confined disk.

This image shows a variety of model simulations for how Herbig-Haro 30 (HH30) should appear in a variety of wavelengths of light, compared with the actual data at bottoms. As you can see, a variety of dust-particle sizes are needed to reproduce what’s observed, with lower dust masses and a fainter central protostar offering the best matches to the data.

Cone-like outflows surround the centrally emitted, rapid, collimated jets.

Based on JWST data, the central jets are surrounded by conical outflows, whose geometry can be inferred based on JWST imagery.

Roughly one Earth mass gets ejected every decade.

The ALMA data concerning Herbig-Haro 30 is most consistent with a perfectly edge-on disk. Even an inclination of 2 degrees or more is ruled out based on the observations, rendering HH30 the most perfectly edge-on Herbig-Haro object known to date.

Vitally, the narrow, dense dust layer within the disk enables the future formation of planets.

Mostly Mute Monday tells an astronomical story in images, visuals, and no more than 200 words.