This Is What a Star Being Born Looks Like – Thanks to Webb! | #shorts

The James Webb Space Telescope has unveiled the captivating birth of a protostar shrouded in a dense cloud of gas and dust. At just 100,000 years old, this young celestial body is unstable, spherical, and about 20-40% the Sun’s mass. Its hourglass-shaped cavities, shown in stunning blue and orange infrared images, form as material shoots away and collides with surrounding dust. Webb’s powerful instruments reveal this region, hidden to the naked eye, within the Taurus star-forming area.

The protostar gathers mass from an accretion disk spiraling toward its core, compressing and heating it. Filaments of shocked molecular hydrogen reveal turbulence, preventing nearby star formation and leaving this protostar to dominate the space. Eventually, its core temperature will reach the point for nuclear fusion, sparking a new star's life. The Webb Telescope provides us an extraordinary window into this cosmic genesis.

Credits:

Credit: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center
Paul Morris: Lead Producer
Thaddeus Cesari: Script