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Stellar Jet in Sh2-284 (NIRCam Compass Image)

Image titled “James Webb Space Telescope; Stellar Jet; SH2-284,” with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key. Gaseous yellow-orange filaments look like a rose seen from the side and tilted slightly from upper left to lower right, slightly higher than the center of the frame. Extending from the rose to upper left and lower right are gaseous outflows that appear as red lobes that have an overall shape of tall, narrow triangles with rounded tips. At the bottom left are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The east arrow points toward 10 o’clock. The north arrow points in the 2 o’clock direction. At the bottom left is a scale bar labeled 1.1 light-years, 15 arcsec. The length of the scale bar is about one sixth of the total image. Below the image is a color key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each filter. From left to right: F162M and 182M are blue, F200W and F356W are green, and F405N and F470N are red.

This image of the protostellar jet in Sh2-284, captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope’s NIRCam (Near-Infrared Camera), shows compass arrows, scale bar, and color key for reference.

The north and east compass arrows show the orientation of the image on the sky. Note that the relationship between north and east on the sky (as seen from below) is flipped to the direction arrows on a map of the ground (as seen from above).

The scale bar is labeled in light-years, which is the distance that light travels in one Earth-year, and arcsec (It takes 1.1 years for light to travel a distance equal to the length of the scale bar.) One light-year is equal to about 5.88 trillion miles or 9.46 trillion kilometers.

This image shows invisible near-infrared wavelengths of light that have been translated into visible-light colors. The color key shows which NIRCam filters were used when collecting the light. The color of each filter name is the visible light color used to represent the infrared light that passes through that filter.

About the Object

  • R.A. Position
    R.A. PositionRight ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position.
    06:46:15.90
  • Dec. Position
    Dec. PositionDeclination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position.
    +00:06:27.44
  • Constellation
    ConstellationOne of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears.
    Orion
  • Distance
    DistanceThe physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs.
    15,000 light-years
  • Dimensions
    DimensionsThe physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky.
    Image is about 1.6 arcmin across (about 7 light-years)

About the Data

  • Data Description
    Data DescriptionProposal: A description of the observations, their scientific justification, and the links to the data available in the science archive.
    Science Team: The astronomers who planned the observations and analyzed the data. "PI" refers to the Principal Investigator.

    This image was created with Webb data from proposal: 2317 (Y. Cheng).

  • Instrument
    InstrumentThe science instrument used to produce the data.
    NIRCam
  • Exposure Dates
    Exposure DatesThe date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time.
    19 October 2022
  • Filters
    FiltersThe camera filters that were used in the science observations.
    F162M, F182M, F200W, F356W, F405N, F470N
  • Object Name
    Object NameA name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object.
    Sh2-284 p1
  • Object Description
    Object DescriptionThe type of astronomical object.
    Stellar jet
  • Release Date
    September 10, 2025
  • Science Release
    NASA’s Webb Observes Immense Stellar Jet on Outskirts of Our Milky Way
    Read the release
  • Credit
    Image: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI, Yu Cheng (NAOJ); Image Processing: Joseph DePasquale (STScI)

Downloads

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Image titled “James Webb Space Telescope; Stellar Jet; SH2-284,” with compass arrows, scale bar, and color key. Gaseous yellow-orange filaments look like a rose seen from the side and tilted slightly from upper left to lower right, slightly higher than the center of the frame. Extending from the rose to upper left and lower right are gaseous outflows that appear as red lobes that have an overall shape of tall, narrow triangles with rounded tips. At the bottom left are compass arrows indicating the orientation of the image on the sky. The east arrow points toward 10 o’clock. The north arrow points in the 2 o’clock direction. At the bottom left is a scale bar labeled 1.1 light-years, 15 arcsec. The length of the scale bar is about one sixth of the total image. Below the image is a color key showing which NIRCam filters were used to create the image and which visible-light color is assigned to each filter. From left to right: F162M and 182M are blue, F200W and F356W are green, and F405N and F470N are red.
Color Info
Color InfoA brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented.

This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the James Webb Space Telescope using the NIRCam instrument. Several filters were used to sample specific wavelength ranges. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. In this case, the assigned colors are:   Blue: F162M+F182M, Green: F200W+F356W,  Red: F405N+F470N

Related Images & Videos

Gaseous yellow-orange filaments look like a rose seen from the side and tilted slightly from upper left to lower right, slightly higher than the center of the frame. Extending from the rose to upper left and lower right are gaseous outflows that appear as red lobes that have an overall shape of tall, narrow triangles with rounded tips. Each red triangle is made up of wavy, irregular lines. Dozens of stars are scattered across the field. One particularly bright white star with eight diffraction spikes is located at the top of the yellow rose. Another bright blue star with even more prominent diffraction spikes is to its lower left. The background of space is black.

Stellar Jet in Sh2-284 (NIRCam Image)

Webb’s image of the enormous stellar jet in Sh2-284 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.

Gaseous yellow-orange filaments look like a rose seen from the side and tilted slightly from upper left to lower right, slightly higher than the center of the frame. Extending from the rose to upper left and lower right are gaseous outflows that appear as red lobes that have an overall shape of tall, narrow triangles with rounded tips. Each red triangle is made up of wavy, irregular lines. Dozens of stars are scattered across the field. One particularly bright white star with eight diffraction spikes is located at the top of the yellow rose. Another bright blue star with even more prominent diffraction spikes is to its lower left. The background of space is black.

Immense Stellar Jet in Sh2-284

This video shows the relative size of two different protostellar jets imaged by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The first image shown is an extremely large protostellar jet located in Sh2-284, 15,000 light-years away from Earth. The outflows from the massive central prot...

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Details

Last Updated
Sep 10, 2025
Location
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Contact
Media

Laura Betz
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center
Greenbelt, Maryland
laura.e.betz@nasa.gov

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