HH 211: A Protostar Announces Itself

Herbig-Haro 211 is one of the youngest and nearest protostellar outflows known, located about 1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. At its center sits an infant star, still hidden inside its natal cloud and only a fraction of its eventual mass.

Herbig-Haro objects form when jets of gas ejected by newborn stars collide at supersonic speeds with surrounding material. Webb's near-infrared vision captures those collisions as glowing bow shocks, rendered here in luminous pinks and blues that trace shocked molecules along the outflow.

What makes HH 211 so striking is its symmetry: two jets streaking outward in opposite directions, mirror images of one another. Our own Sun likely looked something like this in its earliest chapter, more than four and a half billion years ago.