James Webb Space Telescope posted a photo:
Go with the (silicate) flow
Webb’s observations of the protostar EC 53 uncovered long sought-after evidence to explain why comets at the edge of our solar system contain crystalline silicates. These comets are found in the ultracold Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud yet these minerals require intense heat to form. Scientists have shown in the past that these minerals also exist in protoplanetary disks around other stars - but they weren’t sure how they got there.
Webb showed for the first time that the hot, inner part of the disk of gas and dust surrounding a very young, actively forming star is where crystalline silicates are forged. Webb also revealed a strong outflow that is capable of carrying the crystals to the outer edges of this disk, cold and distant locales, where comets may eventually form. Compared to our own fully formed, mostly dust-cleared solar system, the crystals would be forming approximately between the Sun and the Earth. These silicates are indeed common minerals found on Earth.
Researchers mapped how the crystals move throughout the system, showing how the star creates and distributes these particles, which are each smaller than a grain of sand. In this image taken by Webb’s NIRCam, one set of winds and scattered light from EC 53’s disk is shown as a white semi-circle angled toward the right.
Read more: go.nasa.gov/49zVemU
Image description: A young star-forming region is filled with wispy orange, red, and blue layers of gas and dust. At center-left, a larger star is circled. It has prominent diffraction spikes and an arc of white at right.
Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (NASA-JPL), Joel Green (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
