The James Webb Telescope reveals a new snapshot, an hourglass of dust around the young star

Magic Shot. On Wednesday, November 16, the James Webb Space Telescope revealed dazzling new images of a huge hourglass-shaped cloud of dust around a forming star known as “protostar L1527” located in the constellation Taurus.

Countdown to a new star ⏳

Hidden in the neck of this “hourglass” of light are the beginnings of a new star – a protostar. Clouds of dust and gas within this region are visible only in infrared light, which are the wavelengths Webb specializes in: https://t.co/DtazblATMW pic.twitter.com/aGEEBO9BB8

—NASA Webb Telescope (@NASAWebb) November 16, 2022

In the picture we see this very young star (only 100,000 years old), hidden in the darkness at the edge of a rotating disk of gas at the level of the neck of the hourglass. But the light from this protostar “leaks” above and below this disk, illuminating cavities in the surrounding gas and dust, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) explained in a joint press release. “This view of L1527 provides a window into the shape of our early solar system and the sun.”they explain.

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The clouds are created by the collision of material ejected from the star with surrounding material. The dust is finer in the blue parts, and thicker in the orange parts. These hitherto hidden orange-and-blue clouds were visible by the telescope’s NIRCam instrument, which operates in the near infrared — a wavelength invisible to the human eye.