NASA telescope photographs planet-transforming grains in deep space

The world's most powerful space telescope has captured stunning images of the minuscule objects surrounding a celestial object located approximately 450 light-years away from Earth.

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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has honed in on the newborn star known as Herbig Haro 30 (HH 30), which is located in the constellation Taurus. The European Space Agency (ESA) has taken to its website to detail the above photograph, which shows the young star seemingly encased in a dense cloud of dust. However, that isn't all that is present within the image. Astronomers are particularly interested in HH 30 and, by extension, these new images, as they show an example of outflowing gas from the star-forming a narrow jet.

These intense jets of gas cause shockwaves through the dust and gas that are forming a disk around the newborn star. The shockwaves heat the material surrounding the star, resulting in a luminescent glow. Astronomers are particularly interested in the evolutionary formation of these disks, as the same process is what created the solar system we are living in today.

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"The creation of a narrow, dense layer of dust is an important stage in the process of planet formation. In this dense region, dust grains clump together to form pebbles and eventually planets themselves," states the ESA

The protoplanetary disks - disks of gas and dust surrounding stars - eventually form planets as the dust begins to coalesce, forming larger clumps of pebbles. These pebbles eventually grow into what we know as planets.

"These grains are only one millionth of a metre across - about the size of a single bacterium. While the large dust grains are concentrated in the densest parts of the disc, the small grains are much more widespread," reads the ESA blog post

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