James Webb Space Telescope spies never-before-seen star behavior in distant nebula (video, photo)

By Stefanie Waldek published 20 hours ago

The phenomenon looks like "sleet pouring down during a storm."

The James Webb Space Telescope has taken another extraordinary photo.

The subject is the Serpens Nebula, which lies about 1,300 light-years from Earth. And the new JWST image showcases a very special phenomenon long theorized to exist, but never before observed.

In the upper left part of the photo are several "protostellar outflows," or jets of gas erupting out of newborn stars. While we've seen such outflows before, we've never seen them line up in the same direction as in the JWST image; NASA likens them to "sleet pouring down during a storm."



Caption/alt text: The Serpens Nebula, as imaged by the James Webb Space Telescope. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, K. Pontoppidan (NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory) and J. Green (Space Telescope Science Institute))

The alignment of the protostellar outflows provides key insight into how stars form and provides strong support for a long-held theory.

More:
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-serpens-nebula-jets-photo