The pinkish-red jets seen in James Webb image.
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured an incredible image - of a star taking birth. The protostar named HH12 is located about 1,300 light years from Earth, according to a report in the BBC. Scientists are excited as the image would provide new clues about how stars came into existence. The outlet said it is about 50,000 years old. The image released by NASA doesn't show the glow of the protostar itself as it is hidden within a disc of gas and dust, but the pinkish-red jets that it's shooting in opposite directions.
"As the blobby ball of gas at the centre compacts down, it rotates. But if it rotates too fast, it will fly apart, so something has to get rid of the angular momentum," Professor Mark McCaughrean, senior scientific advisor to European Space Agency, told the BBC.
"We think it's jets and outflows. We think that as all the material shrinks down, magnetic fields are pulled together and then some of the material coming in through the disc gets captured on magnetic fields and is thrown out through the poles. That's why we call these structures bi-polar," he further said.
The red colour is due to the presence of molecular hydrogen.
HH212 was first discovered in 1993, near the Belt of Orion, and astronomers have spent the past three decades taking images in order to uncover how the star is slowly forming.
Professor McCaughrean said this is the first-time that scientists have got a "good colour image" of the protostar, adding that it was not possible with ground telescopes.
Scientists said the image will also tell them about the birth of the Sun, which would have looked the same.
JWST was launched two years ago and it situated more than one million miles away at what is called the "Lagrange Point 2". It is the successor to Hubble telescope and has been providing stunning images of deep space captured by its advances instruments.