Mark McCaughreanNov 4, 2023

Morning.

Here it is, several thousand years in the making: the protostellar jet HH212 as seen in the infrared by #JWST.

We discovered this jet in 1993, glowing in the light of shocked molecular hydrogen at 2.12 microns, as gas emerges symmetrically at about 100 km/s from the two poles of a young protostar not far from the Horsehead Nebula in Orion.

Our new JWST image spans six wavelengths & is ten times sharper than any previous infrared image.

#Astronomy #SpaceScience #Astrodon

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Show threadAndreas BrunthalerNov 4, 2023
@markmccaughrean
Fantastic image, but I almost like this other protostar more. Is that the shadow of the accretion disk?
Show threadMark McCaughreanNov 4, 2023
@brunthal The blue one at left? Yes, it’s pretty too, but mysterious. Very large, but no obvious dust continuum from Herschel to mark a protostar. And if that is an edge-on accretion disk, then it begs the question of if / how we’re seeing the central star. The band of red H2 emission in the midplane is really strange too.
Show threadAndreas BrunthalerNov 5, 2023
@markmccaughrean
Left? I mean the 'Hamburger' source with blue buns and a dark patty to the right of the first image (where the jet is horizontally). Or the bottom right protostar in the image where the jet is vertically. Very intriguing source.
Show threadMark McCaughreanNov 5, 2023
@brunthal Apologies – my directional typo. Yes, that’s the one 🙃
Show threadAndreas Brunthaler
@markmccaughrean
I wish NASA could release images always in RA/DEC, to avoid confusion 😀
Nov 5, 2023 at 10:53amWeb
Show threadMark McCaughreanNov 5, 2023

@brunthal Well, in this case, this image wasn’t released by either NASA or ESA, just me, & to be fair to them, they usually have orientation information & a compass rose with their releases. Similarly, the JWST images in ESASky including my Orion ones are located in RA,dec space.

To maximise the science in HH212, I chose a specific telescope orient to lie it along the main detector axis. And rotating it to N up, E left as below also crops it 🤷‍♂️

There’s no winning 🙂

Show threadAndreas BrunthalerNov 5, 2023

@markmccaughrean
Sorry, I keep forgetting that most non-radio telescope don't have a circular field of view, and that these released images are mainly for the public, where orientation and coordinates don't really matter.

I'm glad that the 🍔 protostar was in the field of view.

Show threadMark McCaughreanNov 5, 2023
@brunthal That wasn’t by accident – we’ve known about it for decades 🙂
Show threadMark McCaughreanNov 5, 2023
@brunthal I hope to get this image into ESASky at some point, but there’s more politics around that than I’d like 🤷‍♂️