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Kelly Lepo

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.

webbtelescope.org/contents/new

#astronomy

A forming protostar surrounded by a large hourglass-shaped nebula. A bright orange object, the protostar, lies at the center of this image. In front of the protostar is a thin grey line, which is the protostar’s accretion disk. Above the protostar is an orange, triangular cloud of gas that points to the top left of the image. The area closest to the protostar is a brighter orange than the area to the top left, and has more pronounced plumes of orange gas. Below the protostar is another triangular cloud of gas that points to the bottom right of the image. The area closest to the protostar is a blend of pronounced blue and orange plumes of gas. Farther toward the bottom right, the color of the gas turns primarily blue. Stars and galaxies of many different shapes and sizes are scattered around the image, although they are noticeably more absent on the left side of the hourglass.
16 Nov 2022 at 16:22 | Open on astrodon.social
9 comments
Kelly Lepo

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
arxiv.org/abs/1212.0861

Diagram depicting the flow of gas around a protostar. A green circle with a diameter of approximately 25,000 A U, labeled “infalling envelope”, has a star at its center. Arrows inside the envelope point toward the star. The star has a faired disk, which has a diameter about one-third that of the green circle. A scale bar shows the disk has a diameter of about 300 A U. The left side of the disk is red and the right side of the disk is blue. Above and below the disk are U-shaped cutouts of the green circle. Inside the cutout, arrows labeled “outflow” point up and down.
16 Nov 2022 at 17:09 | Open on astrodon.social
ThatHil
Kelly Lepo

@ThatHil
This is a diagram from a science paper that I grabbed quickly.

Usually when discussing things about the size of our solar system, astronomers use units of AU, astronomical units, the average distance between the Earth and the Sun. It's about 150 million kilometers (93 million miles).

Why? It gives you an intuitive-ish size scale. Much easier than talking about millions of km.

16 Nov 2022 at 20:51 | Open on astrodon.social
ThatHil

@kellylepo
Thank you :) I meant why minus numbers? Not that I'll probably understand any explanation. Anyway am glad to have discovered there IS a bigger unit of measurement than a football pitch or Wales.

16 Nov 2022 at 20:58 | Open on mastodon.uk.com
Working Class Games
Average Alegreya Afficionado

@kellylepo this diagram was confusing initially before I read the labels; am I correct in saying that the green parts here aren't visible in the image and the outflow (uncoloured here) is the hourglass shape?

16 Nov 2022 at 21:50 | Open on astrodon.social
James Bly

@kellylepo Am I the only one looking for an arrow that says "you are here"? Congrats on being one of the first federated posts to show up for me. Glad to know this things on.

17 Nov 2022 at 2:31 | Open on perish.restricted.garden
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