Breathtaking 'cosmic tornado' swirling image captured by NASA telescope
'Cosmic tornado' swirls in stunning new James Webb Space Telescope image.
NASA used the Webb telescope to focus on Herbig-Haro 49-50, nicknamed the “cosmic tornado” because of its helical appearance. The outflows of material produced by jets launched from a nearby forming star can extend for light-years.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has unveiled an awe-inspiring celestial spectacle of a spiral galaxy interacting with a plume of dust and gas from a newborn star. NASA said in a statement it was "a lucky alignment" of the two unrelated objects.
When stars are born, they often release powerful jets that carve dramatic trails through space. In the incredible image, the young star’s jet appears alongside a perfectly aligned distant spiral galaxy.
Herbig-Haro 49/50 is located about 630 light-years from Earth in the constellation Chamaeleon. When NASA's now-retired Spitzer Space Telescope first observed Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50) in 2006, scientists dubbed it the "Cosmic Tornado" due to its spiral-like appearance. However, the nature of the fuzzy object at the tip of the "tornado" remained a mystery.
Recently, NASA focused the Webb telescope on HH 49/50 and, with its higher imaging resolution, Webb was able to reveal fine features of the star's outflow and reveal the fuzzy object to be a distant spiral galaxy.
This side-by-side comparison shows a Spitzer Space Telescope image of HH 49/50 (left) versus a Webb image of the same object (right) using the NIRCam and MIRI instruments. The Webb image shows intricate details of the heated gas and dust as the protostellar jet slams into the material. Webb also resolves the "fuzzy" object located at the tip of the outflow into a distant spiral galaxy. (Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, NASA-JPL, SSC)
NASA called the resulting image 'an extraordinary cosmic coincidence' and one of the most remarkable images ever captured by the JWST.
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