The James Webb telescope from NASA has captured images of the snake nebula, revealing a rare alignment of star jets. These images provide a new insight into the process of star formation.
These emissions occur when high-speed jets of hot gas from young stars encounter surrounding dust and gases. In the new images taken with the Webb infrared camera (NIRCAM), multiple emissions in the northern part of the snake nebula are aligned in a single direction.
The snake nebula, located approximately 1300 light years away from Earth, is a dense cluster of young stars, some of which are only around 100,000 years old. Previous significant discoveries in this area include “the shadow of the bat” observed in 2020 with the Hubble Telescope’s predecessor, Hubble.
The alignment of emissions in the new images confirms the longstanding theory among astronomers that stars begin to rotate in one direction as clouds collapse to form stars. This alignment, now clearly observed, signifies the fundamental process of star formation.
Interstellar gas clouds rapidly rotate during their collapse and star formation, resulting in a disk of material around young stars. Magnetic fields within this disk propel star material outward in opposite directions, forming the observed jets in the new Webb images characterized by a reddish tint due to molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide.
Previously obscured by dense dust, the area of the snake nebula known as serpens north can now be observed directly thanks to the Webb telescope. The young stars and their emissions, which previously appeared as mere spots or were completely invisible in the optical range, are now visible.
Future research utilizing the Webb spectrograph (nirspec) aims to analyze the chemical composition of the cloud and study the complex compounds present in it