What it is: The Serpens Nebula
Where it is: 1,300 light years away, in the constellation Serpens
When it was shared: 12 August 2024
Why it is so special: This is a new image of an old favorite, the Serpens Nebula, where a cloud of gas and dust is illuminated by starlight. With its infrared capabilities, the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) now reveals the source of this light: newborn stars.
In this image, taken with the JWST near-infrared camera, look to the upper left corner. The bright red streaks are jets of gas from newborn stars hitting the surrounding gas and dust, creating shock waves. they all lean in the same direction.
This is important because it provides evidence for the theory that when clouds of dust and gas collapse and stars are formed, all of these stars rotate in the same direction. The problem is that before the development of JWST, which could observe in the infrared – that is, penetrate thick clouds of dust and gas – it was not possible to see newborn stars or their jets in optical wavelengths. Therefore, it was impossible to confirm this theory.
Related: 35 stunning images from the James Webb Space Telescope
“Astronomers have long believed that when clouds collapse and stars form, the stars tend to rotate in the same direction,” said Klaus Pontoppidanprincipal investigator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. “However, this has never been observed so directly before. These aligned, elongated structures are a historical record of the fundamental way stars are born.”
Serpens is a reflection nebula, a cloud of gas and dust that doesn’t produce its own light but reflects light from nearby stars or those within it. All of the colored trails you see in this image — filaments and streaks — are reflected starlight from newborn stars. Orange indicates where dust is in front of the reflected light.
The Serpens Nebula is about 1 to 2 million years old—incredibly young by cosmic standards. This star-forming region is home to a dense cluster of newborn stars just 100,000 years old, visible in the center of the image.
