James Webb Space Telescope Feed Post

Mark McCaughrean | A JWST image of the HH211 protostellar jet & outflow

This is a near-infrared image of the very young HH211 protostellar jet and outflow in Perseus, made using NIRCam on the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope. The filters combined to make this colour composite are F210M & F212N (blue), F335M (green), F466N (yellow), & F460M & F470N (red). Shocked molecular hydrogen emission shows as purple (the 2.12 & 4.69 micron lines combining), polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons as gree, and carbon monoxide as yellow-white. The central protostar, perhaps only 10,000 years old, lies in the centre and is obscured from direct sight by the torus of dust and gas surrounding it. A cropped and rotated version of this image was used on the front cover of Nature, published 5 October 2023, linked to the paper we wrote about HH211 being almost exclusively molecular, with the first author being Tom Ray of DIAS in Dublin, along with me and many members of the JWST MIRI European Consortium (doi.org/10.1038/s41586-023-06551-1). Image & Description by Mark McCaughrean