Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2024

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2024 port material down, like a whirlpool around a drain. The swirling mag- netic fields in the inner disk launch some of the material into twin jets that shoot outward in opposite di- rections, perpendicular to the disk of material. T his image shows the center of the Serpens Nebula as seen by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam). The Serpens Neb- ula, located 1,300 light-years from Earth, is home to a particularly dense cluster of newly forming stars (~100,000 years old), some of which will eventually grow to the mass of our Sun. Webb’s image of this nebula revealed a grouping of aligned protostellar outflows (seen in the top left). These jets are signified by bright clumpy streaks that appear red, which are shock waves from the jet hit- ting surrounding gas and dust. In this image, throughout the region, filaments and wisps of different hues represent reflected starlight from still-forming pro- tostars within the cloud. In some areas, there is dust in front of that reflection, which appears here with an orange, diffuse shade. [NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (NASA-JPL), Joel Green (STScI)]