Supersonic Outflow of Young Star (Herbig-Haro 211)

Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars, and are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these young stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds.  This spectacular image of Herbig-Haro 211 reveals an outflow from a infantile star, that is similar to our own Sun when it was no more than a few tens of thousand of years old. At roughly 1,000 light-years away from Earth, it’s one of the youngest and nearest objects of its type. Webb’s sensitive infrared vision can pierce through the gas and dust, picking up on the heat emissions from the star’s outflows and mapping out structure in unprecedented detail.