NASA’s Webb Telescope Unmasks True Nature of the Cosmic Tornado

NASA · March 24

5 Min Read

NASA’s Webb Telescope Unmasks True Nature of the Cosmic Tornado

Angled from the upper left corner to the lower right corner of the image is a conical shaped orange-red cloud known at Herbig-Haro 49/50. This feature takes up about three-fourths of the length of this angle. The upper left end of this feature has a translucent, rounded end. At this same location there is background spiral shaped galaxy with a concentrated blue center that fades outwards to blend in with red spiral arms. The conical feature widens slightly from the rounded end at the upper right down to the lower right. Along the way there are additional rounded edges, like edges of a wave, intricate foamy-like details, as well as a clearer view of the black background of space. The black background of space is clearer, speckled with some white stars and smaller, more numerous, fainter white galaxies.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light.

Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

Craving an ice cream sundae with a cherry on top? This random alignment of Herbig-Haro 49/50 — a frothy-looking outflow from a nearby protostar — with a multi-hued spiral galaxy may do the trick. This new composite image combining observations from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) and MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) provides a high-resolution view to explore the exquisite details of this bubbling activity.

Herbig-Haro objects are outflows produced by jets launched from a nearby, forming star. The outflows, which can extend for light-years, plow into a denser region of material. This creates shock waves, heating the material to higher temperatures. The material then cools by emitting light at visible and infrared wavelengths.

Image A:
Herbig-Haro 49/50 (NIRCam and MIRI Image)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope observed Herbig-Haro 49/50, an outflow from a nearby still-forming star, in high-resolution near- and mid-infrared light. The intricate features of the outflow, represented in reddish-orange color, provide detailed clues about how young stars form and how their jet activity affects the environment around them. Like the wake of a speeding boat, the bow shocks in this image have an arc-like appearance as the fast-moving jet from the young star slams into the surrounding dust and gas. A chance alignment in this direction of the sky provides a beautiful juxtaposition of this nearby Herbig-Haro object with a more distant spiral galaxy in the background. Herbig-Haro 49/50 gives researchers insights into the early phases of the formation of low-mass stars similar to our own Sun. In this Webb image, blue represents light at 2.0-microns (F200W), cyan represents light at 3.3-microns (F335M), green is 4.4-microns (F444W), orange is 4.7-microns (F470N), and red is 7.7-microns (F770W).

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI

When NASA’s retired Spitzer Space Telescope observed it in 2006, scientists nicknamed Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50) the “Cosmic Tornado” for its helical appearance, but they were uncertain about the nature of the fuzzy object at the tip of the “tornado.” With its higher imaging resolution, Webb provides a different visual impression of HH 49/50 by revealing fine features of the shocked regions in the outflow, uncovering the fuzzy object to be a distant spiral galaxy, and displaying a sea of distant background galaxies.

Image B:
Herbig-Haro 49/50 (Spitzer and Webb Images Side-by-Side)

A side-by-side comparison of a Spitzer infrared image of Herbig-Haro 49/50 (left) versus a Webb infrared image of the same object. The Spitzer image show the Herbig-Haro object as a conical feature, tornado-like in appearance, appearing from the upper left to the lower right in shades of blue, green, and yellow. The background is punctuated with white small galaxies. A round nebulosity with a blue core and reddish halo appears at the tip of the cone. The Webb view, dominated with shades of orange-red colors in the conical feature, reveals a detailed spiral galaxy with a concentrated blue center that fades outwards to blend in with red spiral arms. The black background speckled with some white stars and smaller, fainter, and more detailed white galaxies.

This side-by-side comparison shows a Spitzer Space Telescope Infrared Array Camera image of HH 49/50 (left) versus a Webb image of the same object (right) using the NIRCam (Near-infrared Camera) instrument and MIRI (Mid-infrared Instrument). The Webb image shows intricate details of the heated gas and dust as the protostellar jet slams into the material. Webb also resolves the “fuzzy” object located at the tip of the outflow into a distant spiral galaxy. The Spitzer image shows 3.6-micron light in blue, the 4.5-micron in green, and the 8.0-micron in red (IRAC1, IRAC2, IRAC4). In the Webb image, blue represents light at 2.0-microns (F200W), cyan represents light at 3.3-microns (F335M), green is 4.4-microns (F444W), orange is 4.7-microns (F470N), and red is 7.7-microns (F770W).

NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, SSC

HH 49/50 is located in the Chamaeleon I Cloud complex , one of the nearest active star formation regions in our Milky Way, which is creating numerous low-mass stars similar to our Sun. This cloud complex is likely similar to the environment that our Sun formed in. Past observations of this region show that the HH 49/50 outflow is moving away from us at speeds of 60-190 miles per second (100-300 kilometers per second) and is just one feature of a larger outflow.

Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI observations of HH 49/50 trace the location of glowing hydrogen molecules, carbon monoxide molecules, and energized grains of dust, represented in orange and red, as the protostellar jet slams into the region. Webb’s observations probe details on small spatial scales that will help astronomers to model the properties of the jet and understand how it is affecting the surrounding material.

The arc-shaped features in HH 49/50, similar to a water wake created by a speeding boat, point back to the source of this outflow. Based on past observations, scientists suspect that a protostar known as Cederblad 110 IRS4 is a plausible driver of the jet activity. Located roughly 1.5 light-years away from HH 49/50 (off the lower right corner of the Webb image), CED 110 IRS4 is a Class I protostar. Class I protostars are young objects (tens of thousands to a million years old) in the prime time of gaining mass. They usually have a discernable disk of material surrounding them that is still falling onto the protostar. Scientists recently used Webb’s NIRCam and MIRI observations to study this protostar and obtain an inventory of the icy composition of its environment.

These detailed Webb images of the arcs in HH 49/50 can more precisely pinpoint the direction to the jet source, but not every arc points back in the same direction. For example, there is an unusual outcrop feature (at the top right of the main outflow) which could be another chance superposition of a different outflow, related to the slow precession of the intermittent jet source. Alternatively, this feature could be a result of the main outflow breaking apart.

The galaxy that appears by happenstance at the tip of HH 49/50 is a much more distant, face-on spiral galaxy. It has a prominent central bulge represented in blue that shows the location of older stars. The bulge also shows hints of “side lobes” suggesting that this could be a barred-spiral galaxy. Reddish clumps within the spiral arms show the locations of warm dust and groups of forming stars. The galaxy even displays evacuated bubbles in these dusty regions, similar to nearby galaxies observed by Webb as part of the PHANGS program.

Webb has captured these two unassociated objects in a lucky alignment. Over thousands of years, the edge of HH 49/50 will move outwards and eventually appear to cover up the distant galaxy.

Want more? Take a closer look at the image, “fly through” it in a visualization, and compare Webb’s image to the Spitzer Space Telescope’s.

Herbig-Haro 49/50 is located about 625 light-years from Earth in the constellation Chamaeleon.

The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb will solve mysteries in our solar system, look beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probe the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Canadian Space Agency.