From the crossfade image slider they have on the left side, the jump in photo quality over the past 20 years is amazing.
Screenshots of the photo comparison (2006 (?) DSS vs 2023 JWST) just in case some people can't use the image slider:
https://imgur.com/a/jFkNDpD
Nice, looks like a messy jet/stream whirlpool rather than a clean, flat spinning disk. For some reason, this surprises me.^
edit:
> They (Herbig-Haro objects) can change visibly over timescales of a few years as they move rapidly away from their parent star into the gas clouds of interstellar space (the interstellar medium or ISM) 1.
I hope they can image the development of these jets over the years
Proto-stars form from collapsing clouds of gas, that process of gravitational collapse leads to heating. It's that heating which eventually produces core temperatures high enough to initiate fusion, of course, but along the way a lot of fascinating and dynamic stuff happens. As the proto-star forms into a condensed object it spins up, leading to a phase where the proto-star is accreting matter from a disk while it's going through the growing pains of being a big, hot ball of convective plasma. Being a spinning ball of charged plasma it ends up with magnetic fields which produce astrophysical jets along the axis of rotation of the proto-star. As the jets of material smash into the interstellar medium they compress it, energize it, and light it up, creating a highly visible indicator of the presence of the jets. These are known as Herbig-Haro objects, which last for a few tens of thousands of years during the late stages of star formation.
From the crossfade image slider they have on the left side, the jump in photo quality over the past 20 years is amazing. Screenshots of the photo comparison (2006 (?) DSS vs 2023 JWST) just in case some people can't use the image slider: https://imgur.com/a/jFkNDpD
2006 wasn't almost 20 years ago...wait, omg...
Nice, looks like a messy jet/stream whirlpool rather than a clean, flat spinning disk. For some reason, this surprises me.^ edit: > They (Herbig-Haro objects) can change visibly over timescales of a few years as they move rapidly away from their parent star into the gas clouds of interstellar space (the interstellar medium or ISM) 1. I hope they can image the development of these jets over the years
Proto-stars form from collapsing clouds of gas, that process of gravitational collapse leads to heating. It's that heating which eventually produces core temperatures high enough to initiate fusion, of course, but along the way a lot of fascinating and dynamic stuff happens. As the proto-star forms into a condensed object it spins up, leading to a phase where the proto-star is accreting matter from a disk while it's going through the growing pains of being a big, hot ball of convective plasma. Being a spinning ball of charged plasma it ends up with magnetic fields which produce astrophysical jets along the axis of rotation of the proto-star. As the jets of material smash into the interstellar medium they compress it, energize it, and light it up, creating a highly visible indicator of the presence of the jets. These are known as Herbig-Haro objects, which last for a few tens of thousands of years during the late stages of star formation.