Nearly 20 Years Ago, a Telescope Captured a ‘Cosmic Tornado.’ Now, the James Webb Telescope Reveals It Was Hiding a Galaxy

Appearances can be deceiving. An untrained eye might mistake a planet in the solar system, such as Venus, for a distant star. Similarly, looking at an image taken by a telescope, you might assume the two most prominent objects are part of the same cosmic phenomenon.

That’s exactly what happens in the latest James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) image.

A cosmic tornado. The new image seems to depict a giant nebula with a star at its tip, but it’s actually a blend of outflows from the forming star Herbig-Haro 49/50 and a distant galaxy hidden far behind it.

Herbig-Haro objects. Star formation produces what are known as Herbig-Haro objects. These form when matter ejected during the process accumulates in regions several light-years from the star’s birthplace. This matter “cools” by emitting light in the visible and infrared spectra.

Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50) is one such object. Astronomers nicknamed it a “cosmic tornado” after observing it through the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2006. The image at the time didn’t make it possible to distinguish the object at the tip of this cosmic tornado.

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A distant galaxy. The new JWST image captures this luminous object in high resolution, revealing the fine details of a distant spiral galaxy. At its bluish center are the oldest stars. In its reddish spirals, galactic dust and regions of intense star formation appear.

Back to the foreground. Herbig-Haro 49/50 dominates the foreground of the image. The cloud of matter lies within the Milky Way, about 625 light-years from the solar system. In this false-color image, glowing hydrogen molecules, carbon dioxide molecules, and energy-charged dust grains appear in red and orange.

This formation exists in the Chamaeleon I cloud complex, one of the closest star-forming regions in the Milky Way. Experts estimate that this jet of matter travels between 60 and 180 miles per second.

And what about the star it comes from? Astronomers believe the source is Cederblad 110 IRS4, a protostar located 1.5 light-years from this cloud. It’s visible in the JWST image at the lower right. Cederblad 110 IRS4 is a Class I protostar, meaning it’s in a phase of rapid accretion.

A merged image. The new JWST image combines several snapshots taken by the telescope through an international collaboration. To create it, experts used observations from two of James Webb’s instruments: the near-infrared camera and the mid-infrared instrument.

Image | NASA | ESA | CSA | STScI

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