The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has captured a stunning image of the violent birth of a young star at the heart of a blue-white cloud of gas and dust, or L1527 Nebula. The event is occurring about 460 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus.

The central “body” of the nebula is a bright protostar estimated to be about 100,000 years old. It has not yet become a full-fledged star, but is part of the process of a protostar evolving into a main-sequence star like the Sun.

Stars are born from molecular clouds when superdense regions gather mass and collapse under their own gravity to form a protostar. The protostar then continues to accumulate material from the remaining cloud of gas and dust from the molecular cloud that gave birth to it. This process continues until the protostar has gained enough mass that the pressure and temperature of its core become high enough to trigger the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium.

The new observation of L1527 and its progenitor star was made with the JWST instrument in the mid-infrared range. The white and blue “leaves” in the image are jets ejected in opposite directions along the rotation axis of the progenitor star as it continues to grow, consuming gas and dust from its “natal cocoon.” These flows cause shock waves in the molecular gas around the progenitor star. These waves are similar to the crests of water created when a boat sails across seas, rivers, and lakes on Earth.

Visible in the center of the image is a dark streak, a disk of material surrounding the protostar and slowly being absorbed by it. The central region is white due to occasional outbursts of material from this young, feeding star. The white glow above and below the central protostar indicates that a mixture of ionized neon and dense dust is being ejected away from the feeding protostar. The red around the protostar is an artifact of the JWST optics.

This isn’t JWST’s first attempt to image this young star and its gaseous cradle. In November 2022, the space telescope observed L1527 with its Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) instrument. The image from this instrument differs from the MIRI version in that it is dominated by orange hues, but the central star remains red and the lower “wing” of this “cosmic butterfly” is painted blue.

As the protostar L1527 continues to age and mature into a main sequence star, it will continue to absorb material from its surroundings. The growing star will also emit energetic jets and radiation that will blow away much of the remnants of the molecular cloud. This will eliminate many of the structures seen in the MIRI and NIRCam images.

Once the transformation is complete, this “space butterfly” will disappear and the star itself will become much brighter. Using two instruments to observe L1527 in both the near-infrared and mid-infrared, JWST has revealed subtleties of the system’s behavior, including how the central protostar affects its region.

Even more stars are being born in the Taurus Molecular Cloud Complex, a stellar nursery of hundreds of newly formed stars where L1527 is located. The impact of stars like these could affect the complex and disrupt the wider molecular cloud, preventing other stars from forming.