Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2024

40 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2024 ASTRO PUBLISHING coming a star. A central protostar grows in the neck of the hourglass, accumulating material from a thin protoplanetary disk, seen edge-on as a dark line. The protostar, a relatively young ob- ject of about 100,000 years, is still surrounded by its parent molecular cloud, or large region of gas and dust. Webb’s previous observation of L1527, with NIRCam (Near-In- frared Camera), allowed us to peer into this region and revealed this molecular cloud and protostar in opaque, vibrant colors. Both NIRCam and MIRI show the ef- fects of outflows, which are emitted in opposite directions along the protostar’s rotation axis as the ob- ject consumes gas and dust from the surrounding cloud. These outflows take the form of bow shocks to the surrounding molecular cloud, which appear as filamentary structures throughout. They are also responsi- ble for carving the bright hourglass structure within the molecular cloud as they energize, or excite, the sur- Webb captures celestial fireworks around forming star by NASA/ESA/CSA Matthew Brown Christine Pulliam A growing protostar embed- ded within a molecular cloud. The center of the image shows a bright, red region, where the protostar resides, with a thin, gray lane cutting through it horizontally, which is the protostar’s accretion disk. Above and below this region are white and blue trian- gular-shaped cavities in the molecu- lar cloud, which give the overall object an hourglass shape. The areas of the cavities closest to the central protostar have more pronounced plumes of white gas and dust that fade to a blue color further from the center. There are red, yellow, orange, blue, and green stars and galaxies scattered across the image. The cosmos seems to come alive with a crackling explosion of py- rotechnics in this new image from NASA’s James Webb Space Tele- scope. Taken with Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument), this fiery hourglass marks the scene of a very young object in the process of be-