The NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope has captured some incredible new details and structures in Lynds 483 (L483) using high-resolution near-infrared light. Two stars are responsible for the beautiful shimmering ejections of gas and dust that gleam in a range of colours, including orange, blue, and purple, as you can see in this image.
Over time, the central stars have been periodically ejecting gas and dust, which has created beautiful, swirling patterns in the cosmos. Over time, there have been some chemical reactions in these ejections and the surrounding cloud, and these reactions have produced a range of molecules, like carbon monoxide, methanol, and several other organic compounds.
Dust covered stars
The two protostars responsible for this scene are at the centre of the hourglass shape, in an opaque horizontal disk of cold gas and dust that fits within a single pixel. Moving further out, above and below the flattened disk where dust is thinner, the bright light from the stars shines through the gas and dust, forming large semi-transparent orange cones.It’s also worth noting where the stars’ light is blocked – look for the exceptionally dark, wide V-shapes offset by 90 degrees from the orange cones.
These areas may look like there is no material at all, but it’s actually where the surrounding dust is the densest, and little starlight can penetrate it.If you look carefully at these areas, you’ll see that Webb’s sensitive NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera) has picked up distant stars as muted orange pinpoints behind this dust.Where the view is free of obscuring dust, stars shine brightly in white and blue.
In the centre is a thin vertical cloud known as Lynds 483 (L483) that is roughly shaped like an hourglass with irregular edges. At the top right is a scale bar labeled 0.1 light-years. The length of the scale bar is about one fifth of the total image. At the bottom left are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The east arrow points toward 12 o’clock. The north arrow points in the 3 o’clock direction. Below the image is a colour key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light colour is assigned to each filter. From left to right: F115W and F200W are blue, F335M is green, F444W is yellow, F470N is red.
Credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI
Unravelling the stars’ ejections
Some of the stars’ jets and outflows have wound up twisted or warped, as you can see in the top right corner where there’s a prominent orange arc. This is a shock front, where the stars’ ejections were slowed by existing, denser material.Now, look a little lower, where orange meets pink, and you’ll see that the material looks like a tangled mess. These are new, incredibly fine details that Webb has revealed, and we’ll need to take a close look to figure out what’s going on.Now, let’s take a peek at the lower half.
Here, the gas and dust appear thicker. Zoom in to see these tiny light purple pillars pointing towards the central stars’ nonstop winds. They’ve formed because the material within them is dense enough that it hasn’t been blown away yet. L483 is too large to fit in a single Webb snapshot, and this image was taken to fully capture the upper section and outflows, which is why the lower section is only partially shown.
All the symmetries and asymmetries in these clouds may eventually be explained as researchers reconstruct the history of the stars’ ejections, in part by updating models to produce the same effects. Astronomers will also calculate how much material the stars have expelled, which molecules were created when material smashed together, and how dense each area is.
Millions of years from now, when the stars are finished forming, they may each be about the mass of our Sun. Their outflows will have cleared the area — sweeping away these semi-transparent ejections.All that may remain is a tiny disk of gas and dust where planets may eventually form.
Why L483
L483 is named for the American astronomer Beverly T. Lynds, who published extensive catalogues of “dark” and “bright” nebulae in the early 1960s. She did this by carefully examining photographic plates (which came before film) of the first Palomar Observatory Sky Survey, accurately recording each object’s coordinates and characteristics. These catalogues were like treasure chests for astronomers, giving them detailed maps of the dust clouds where stars are born. These maps were super important for decades before digital files became available and everyone got online.
