JWST spots an energetic ‘Cosmic Tornado’ 625 light-years away
The new image also helped solve a nearly 20-year-old mystery. The post JWST spots an energetic ‘Cosmic Tornado’ 625 light-years away appeared first on Popular Science.
A powerful “Cosmic Tornado” has received a high-definition glow-up thanks to NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The new look at Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50) released today also answers a question that’s kept astronomers curious since they first spotted the distant formation nearly 20 years ago.
HH 49/50 was first glimpsed by NASA’s now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope in 2006. Located approximately 625 light-years from Earth in the Chamaeleon constellation, astronomers soon nicknamed HH 49/50 the “Cosmic Tornado” for its distinct funnel shape. Herbig-Haro objects like this one aren’t rare, but they do only occur under very specific circumstances related during a star’s earliest phases, when it is known as a protostar.
A protostar’s journey to becoming a distant planet’s sun encompasses multiple phases and spans millions of years. Immense amounts of energy are both needed and generated during all that time, including the creation of Herbig-Haro objects. These arrangements are created after high energy jets streak across multiple light-years to collide with regions of denser material. The resultant shock waves can then heat the surrounding material, which cools through the emission of light at both infrared and visible wavelengths.
When Spitzer first spotted HH 49.50, astronomers noticed a small, bright spot of contention at the Cosmic Tornado’s upper tip. Experts have gone back-and-forth about the fuzzy mystery object’s identity ever since. By using JWST’s powerful toolkit, astronomers now have an answer.
The latest look at HH 49/50 is one of the best looks yet at a Herbig-Haro object, and was created by combining taken by the space telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) and Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI). The swirling jetflows estimated to be speeding away from us at 60 to 190 miles per hour are composed of glowing carbon monoxide and hydrogen molecules, as well as highly energized cosmic dustmotes.
“The arc-shaped features in HH 49/50, similar to a water wake created by a speeding boat, point back to the source of this outflow,” NASA explained in its announcement. “Based on past observations, scientists suspect that a protostar known as Cederblad 110 IRS4 is a plausible driver of the jet activity.”
CED 110 IRS4 can be seen near the image’s lower right corner, and is located about 1.5 light-years away from HH 49/50. As a Class I protostar, astronomers estimate it to be no more than one million years old, and in its peak era for gaining mass.
As for the bright dot first captured in 2006, it doesn’t take an expert astronomer to identify the well-defined reveal documented by the JWST. According to NASA, it’s a spiral galaxy located against a “sea of distant background galaxies.”. A closer look showcases a blue “prominent central bulge” home to older stars, while the red regions inside the spiral arms indicate the galaxy’s own clouds of gas and protostars.
The lucky alignment of HH 49/50 with a face-on spiral galaxy provides a unique look at two cosmic bodies—one that could only happen at this point in time. Given HH 49/50’s jetstream speeds, the energy plumes will likely completely obscure the spiral galaxy within a few thousand years.
The post JWST spots an energetic ‘Cosmic Tornado’ 625 light-years away appeared first on Popular Science.
