NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope captured a blowtorch of seething gasses erupting from a volcanically growing monster star in this image released on Sept. 10, 2025. Stellar jets, which are powered by the gravitational energy released as a star grows in mass, encode the formation history of the protostar. This image provides evidence that protostellar jets scale with the mass of their parent stars—the more massive the stellar engine driving the plasma, the larger the resulting jet.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Yu Cheng (NAOJ); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
在这张于2025年9月10日发布的图像中，NASA詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜捕捉到了一股如喷灯般炽烈的高温气体，从一颗正经历剧烈火山式增长的怪兽级恒星中喷涌而出。恒星喷流由恒星在质量增长过程中释放的引力能量所驱动，记录着原恒星的形成历史。这幅图像提供了有力证据，表明原恒星喷流的规模会随母星质量而变化——驱动等离子体的恒星引擎质量越大，形成的喷流也就越庞大。
图片来源: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Yu Cheng (NAOJ); 图像处理: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)
