The James Webb Telescope Finds a Question Mark in Space, Literally
For just over a year, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has been bringing us beautiful images of many galaxies, stars, nebulae, and more in never before seen detail. However, it’s most recent image, a stunning look at a pair of actively forming stars, has left many viewers scratching their heads at a question mark hidden deep in the landscape.
The questionable photo, released on July 26th, features Herbig-Haro 46/47, a “tightly bound pair of actively forming stars” (via Webb Space Telescope). Herbig Haro (HH) objects are bright patches of nebulae that are associated with newborn stars and are often seen around a single star in a star-forming region. HH objects form as jets of ionized gases from the newborn stars collide with the surrounding interstellar gas and dust. In a similar fashion to that of a supernova remnant, HH objects tend to stick around for tens of thousands of years as they rapidly move away from the star they came from.
In the case of Herbig-Haro 46/47, the two stars are so tightly bound together that they almost look like a single object. The stars are so well hidden in the HH objects that surround them that they appear as an orange-white “splotch” in the center of the red spikes seen near the middle of the image.
