James Webb solves star rotation mystery in Serpens Nebula
12:32 PM EDT, July 21, 2024
The James Webb Space Telescope has answered a question that astronomers have pondered for years. Stars rotate in the same direction as the clouds from which they formed, and the Webb Telescope provided evidence of this phenomenon through photographs.
The photos were taken in the Serpens Nebula, a particularly fertile area for star formation. It is there that the telescope captured images of a protostar forming at the moment when streams of gas were escaping from a very young star and colliding with the surrounding gas and dust. Both the gases and the dust were directed in the same direction.
Astronomers have long assumed that as clouds collapse to form stars, the stars will tend to spin in the same direction. However, this has not been seen so directly before. These aligned, elongated structures are a historical record of the fundamental way that stars are born – said Klaus Pontoppidan from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The Serpens Nebula became clearly visible to scientists only thanks to the Webb Telescope.
We’re now able to catch these extremely young stars and their outflows, some of which previously appeared as just blobs or were completely invisible in optical wavelengths because of the thick dust surrounding them — added Joel Green from the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore.
Star formation. Next, we move on to planet formation
Scientists also want to understand the chemical composition of the clouds surrounding planets and stars and learn how the volatile substances contained within them survive the formation of these celestial bodies. Later, these results will be compared to the amounts of similar substances in disks around various stars.
According to experts, this will bring us closer to understanding the origins of the entire Solar System.
In fact, we are all made of matter originating from these volatile compounds. Most of the water on Earth formed when the Sun was a young protostar billions of years ago. Studying the amounts of these key substances can help us understand how unique the circumstances were in which our Solar System was formed – points out Dr. Pontoppidan.
