Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI; Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

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 young star is off to the lower right corner of the Webb image.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. A chance alignment in this direction of the sky provides a beautiful juxtaposition of this nearby Herbig-Haro object (located within our Milky Way) with a face-on spiral galaxy in the distant background.

Protostars are young stars in the process of formation that generally launch narrow jets of material. These jets move through the surrounding environment, in some cases extending to large distances away from the protostar.

Like the water wake generated by a speeding boat, the arcs in this image are created by the fast-moving jet slamming into surrounding dust and gas. This ambient material is compressed and heats up, then cools by emitting light at visible and infrared wavelengths. In particular, the infrared light captured here by Webb highlights molecular hydrogen and carbon monoxide.

The galaxy that appears by happenstance at the tip of Herbig-Haro 49/50 is a much more distant spiral galaxy. It has a prominent central bulge represented in blue that shows the location of older stars. It also displays 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.

There are many more galaxies at further distances in the surrounding background, including ones that shine through the diffuse infrared glow of the nearby Herbig-Haro object.

Provider: Space Telescope Science Institute

Image Source: https://webbtelescope.org/contents/news-releases/2025/news-2025-112

Curator: STScI, Baltimore, MD, USA

Image Use Policy: http://stsci.edu/copyright/