NASA Webb Finds Young Sun-Like Star Forging, Spewing Common Crystals
Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain crystalline
Astronomers have long sought evidence to explain why comets at the outskirts of our own solar system contain crystalline silicates, since crystals require intense heat to form and these “dirty snowballs” spend most of their time in the ultracold Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud. Now, looking outside our solar system, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has returned the first conclusive evidence that links how those conditions are possible. The telescope clearly 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. Compared to our own fully formed, mostly dust-cleared solar system, the crystals would be forming approximately between the Sun and Earth.
Webb’s sensitive mid-infrared observations of the protostar, cataloged EC 53, also show that the powerful winds from the star’s disk are likely catapulting these crystals into distant locales, like the incredibly cold edge of its protoplanetary disk where comets may eventually form.
“EC 53’s layered outflows may lift up these newly formed crystalline silicates and transfer them outward, like they’re on a cosmic highway,” said Jeong-Eun Lee, the lead author of a new paper in Nature and a professor at Seoul National University in South Korea. “Webb not only showed us exactly which types of silicates are in the dust near the star, but also where they are both before and during a burst.”
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s 2024 NIRCam image shows protostar EC 53 circled. Researchers using new data from Webb’s MIRI proved that crystalline silicates form in the hottest part of the disk of gas and dust surrounding the star — and may be shot to the system’s edges.
Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Klaus Pontoppidan (NASA-JPL), Joel Green (STScI); Image Processing: Alyssa Pagan (STScI)
The team used Webb’s MIRI (Mid-Infrared Instrument) to collect two sets of highly detailed spectra to identify specific elements and molecules, and determine their structures. Next, they precisely mapped where everything is, both when EC 53 is “quiet” (but still gradually “nibbling” at its disk) and when it’s more active (what’s known as an outburst phase).
This star, which has been studied by this team and others for decades, is highly predictable. (Other young stars have erratic outbursts, or their outbursts last for hundreds of years.) About every 18 months, EC 53 begins a 100-day, bombastic burst phase, kicking up the pace and absolutely devouring nearby gas and dust, while ejecting some of its intake as powerful jets and outflows. These expulsions may fling some of the newly formed crystals into the outskirts of the star’s protoplanetary disk.
“Even as a scientist, it is amazing to me that we can find specific silicates in space, including forsterite and enstatite near EC 53,” said Doug Johnstone, a co-author and a principal research officer at the National Research Council of Canada. “These are common minerals on Earth. The main ingredient of our planet is silicate.” For decades, research has also identified crystalline silicates not only on comets in our solar system, but also in distant protoplanetary disks around other, slightly older stars — but couldn’t pinpoint how they got there. With Webb’s new data, researchers now better understand how these conditions might be possible.
“It’s incredibly impressive that Webb can not only show us so much, but also where everything is,” said Joel Green, a co-author and an instrument scientist at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. “Our research team mapped how the crystals move throughout the system. We’ve effectively shown how the star creates and distributes these superfine particles, which are each significantly smaller than a grain of sand.”
Webb’s MIRI data also clearly shows the star’s narrow, high-velocity jets of hot gas near its poles, and the slightly cooler and slower outflows that stem from the innermost and hottest area of the disk that feeds the star. The image above, which was taken by another Webb instrument, NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), shows one set of winds and scattered light from EC 53’s disk as a white semi-circle angled toward the right. Its winds also flow in the opposite direction, roughly behind the star, but in near-infrared light, this region appears dark. Its jets are too tiny to pick out.
This illustration represents half the disk of gas and dust surrounding the protostar EC 53. Stellar outbursts periodically form crystalline silicates, which are launched up and out to the edges of the system, where comets and other icy rocky bodies may eventually form.
Illustration: NASA, ESA, CSA, Elizabeth Wheatley (STScI)
EC 53 is still “wrapped” in dust and may be for another 100,000 years. Over millions of years, while a young star’s disk is heavily populated with teeny grains of dust and pebbles, an untold number of collisions will occur that may slowly build up a range of larger rocks, eventually leading to the formation of terrestrial and gas giant planets. As the disk settles, both the star itself and any rocky planets will finish forming, the dust will largely clear (no longer obscuring the view), and a Sun-like star will remain at the center of a cleared planetary system, with crystalline silicates “littered” throughout.
EC 53 is part of the Serpens Nebula, which lies 1,300 light-years from Earth and is brimming with actively forming stars.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the world’s premier space science observatory. Webb is solving mysteries in our solar system, looking beyond to distant worlds around other stars, and probing the mysterious structures and origins of our universe and our place in it. Webb is an international program led by NASA with its partners, ESA (European Space Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency).
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