Travel to James Webb Space Telescope's NIRCam and MIRI instrument views of protostar L1527. The protostar is about 100,000 years old.
Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Paul Morris: Lead Producer
Thaddeus Cesari: Script
Dr. Michelle Thaller: Narrator
Music Credit:
"Looking to the Future" by Carl David Harms [IMRO] via BBC Production Music [PRS], and Universal Production Music.
Credit: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Paul Morris: Lead Producer
Thaddeus Cesari: Script
Dr. Michelle Thaller: Narrator
Music Credit:
"Looking to the Future" by Carl David Harms [IMRO] via BBC Production Music [PRS], and Universal Production Music.
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TechTranscript
00:00Enshrouded deep within a gaseous cloud, the once hidden features of this young and elusive protostar have been revealed by the James Webb Space Telescope.
00:09Protostars like these that are still cocooned in a dark cloud of dust and gas have a long way to go before they become full-fledged stars.
00:16At only about 100,000 years old, it is at the earliest stage of star formation and doesn't yet generate its own energy through nuclear fusion of hydrogen.
00:25Its shape, while mostly spherical, is also unstable, taking the form of a small, hot, and puffy cloud of gas, somewhere between 20 and 40 percent the mass of our own sun.
00:36Its signature hourglass shape has helped to provide insight into the beginnings of a new star at the precipice of a long and dynamic life ahead.
00:44The region's most prevalent features, the vibrant blue and orange clouds, in this representative-color infrared image,
00:51outlined cavities created as material shoots away from the 2b star and collides with surrounding matter.
00:58These blazing clouds within the torus star-forming region are only visible in infrared light,
01:03making it an ideal target for two of Webb's powerful scientific instruments, the near-infrared camera and the mid-infrared instrument.
01:10The colors themselves are due to layers of dust between Webb and the clouds.
01:15Blue areas show where the dust is thinnest. The thicker the layer of dust, the less blue light is able to escape, creating rich pockets of orange.
01:24As it continues to gather mass, its core gradually compresses and gets closer to stable nuclear fusion.
01:30The surrounding molecular cloud is made up of dense layers of dust and gas being drawn to the center, where the protostar resides.
01:38As the material falls in, it spirals around the center. This creates a dense disk of material, known as an accretion disk, which feeds material to the protostar.
01:48As it gains more mass and compresses further, the temperature of its core will rise, eventually reaching the threshold for nuclear fusion to begin.
01:57Webb also reveals filaments of molecular hydrogen that have been shocked as the protostar ejects material away from it.
02:04Shocks and turbulence inhibit the formation of new stars, which would otherwise form all throughout the cloud.
02:10As a result, the protostar dominates the space, taking much of the material for itself.
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02:16The...
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