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Stellar Jet in Sh2-284 (NIRCam Image)

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.

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope recently imaged an extremely large and symmetric protostellar jet at the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy in the forming cluster Sh2-284. From tip to tip, this protostellar jet is 8 light-years across, about double the distance from our Sun to its closest neighboring star system, Alpha Centauri.

Its detection provides evidence that protostellar jets scale with the mass of their parent star—the more massive the stellar engine driving the plasma, the larger the resulting jet—and thus for a universal mechanism for star formation from low to high masses. 

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

  • Full Res (JPG), 3000 × 2869
    jpg (1.75 MB)
  • Full Res (For Print), 3000 × 2869
    tif (9.03 MB)
  • Full Res (For Display), 3000 × 2869
    png (10.32 MB)
  • 2000 × 1913
    jpg (912.29 KB)
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.
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

Compass and Scale
Compass and ScaleAn astronomical image with a scale that shows how large an object is on the sky, a compass that shows how the object is oriented on the sky, and the filters with which the image was made.

Related Images & Videos

Image titled u201cJames Webb Space Telescope; Stellar Jet; SH2-284,u201d 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 ou2019clock. The north arrow points in the 2 ou2019clock 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.

Stellar Jet in Sh2-284 (NIRCam Compass Image)

This image of the stellar 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.

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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