Young Stars, Stellar Jets
High-speed outflows of molecular gas from a pair of actively forming
young stars shine in infrared light, revealing themselves in
this NIRcam image
from the James Webb Space Telescope.
Cataloged as HH (Herbig-Haro) 46/47, the young stars are
lodged within a dark nebula
that is largely opaque when viewed in visible light.
The pair lie at the center of the prominent reddish
diffraction spikes
in the NIRcam image.
Their
energetic stellar jets
extend for nearly a light-year,
burrowing into
the dark interstellar material.
A tantalizing object to explore with Webb's infrared capabilities, this
young star system
is relatively nearby,
located only some 1,140 light-years distant in the nautical
constellation Vela.