Gregory's Server
Babe, wake up, a new #JWST image just dropped.
Light from the protostar L1527 escapes above and below an edge-on protoplanetary disk (the dark line at the center of the image), creating an hourglass shape. This illuminates the cavities carved as ejected material from the star collides with the surrounding, dusty nebula.
Dust scatters shorter wavelengths of light, so blue areas are where the dust is thinner and orange areas are where the dust is more dense.
https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2022/news-2022-055
Here is a diagram that shows the scale of this system and the flow of material. 1 au = the distance between the Earth and the Sun.
Gas falls from the nebula onto the disk surrounding the forming star, before being pulled into the star itself. The protostar and the disk also work together to eject material, which carves a cavity above and below the disk.
Credit: Tobin et al. 2012
https://arxiv.org/abs/1212.0861