Hourglass Protostar

In this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), the neck of the “hourglass” hides a protostar called L1527. It’s only about 100,000 years old — a star in its earliest stage of formation. For perspective, our Sun is about 4.6 billion years old! The “hourglass” itself is the illuminated portion of a dusty cloud, lit up by the protostar. The blue areas are where dust is thinnest, while the orange pockets are where dust is much thicker. The protostar is embedded within a cloud of material feeding its growth. Ejections from the star have cleared out cavities above and below it, whose boundaries glow orange and blue in this infrared view. The upper central region displays bubble-like shapes due to stellar “burps,” or sporadic ejections.