James Webb Sends Stunning Photo of ‘Space Tornado’ – Future and Past Meshed in One Frame

The James Webb Space Observatory has once again demonstrated its remarkable capabilities as a cutting-edge instrument. It has captured the most detailed image yet of a new star-forming region, filled with the dynamics of dust and gas clouds moving under the influence of radiation from newborn stars. An ancient galaxy accidentally ended up in the frame, creating a “tornado eye” effect and symbolically uniting the past and the future – old stars with young ones.

Image source: NASA

The Webb telescope has captured the Herbig-Haro 49/50 region in our galaxy. In the lower left corner of the image is the newborn star Cederblad 110 IRS4 (CED 110 IRS4). This region was previously captured by NASA’s Spitzer telescope, but its image contained few details and also showed a “fuzzy object” at the tip of the “tornado.” Webb’s near- and mid-infrared image revealed many important details in the structure of the dust and gas clouds. The “fuzzy object” turned out to be a spiral galaxy, which happened to be captured in the frame from an unusual perspective.

On the left is an image of Spitzer, on the right is Webb.

«””Webb captured these two unrelated objects at just the right moment,” the telescope team explained. “Over thousands of years, the edge of HH 49/50 will expand and eventually obscure the distant galaxy.”

The resulting image shows molecular hydrogen in orange and carbon monoxide in red. These gases are heated by the energy of jets from a nearby newborn star, setting the clouds in motion. The apparent chaos is controlled by the star’s electromagnetic field and radiation, allowing scientists to observe a process that in many ways resembles the birth of our solar system.