'Frothy,' cosmic tornado captured in new images from NASA's Webb telescope
Mar 25, 2025
Frothy and resembling an ice cream sundae thats how NASA described a newly-released, stunning image of a cosmic tornado from its James Webb Space Telescope.The telescope captured an image of the bright cloud of gas and dust tha
t surrounds a newborn star, otherwise known as a Herbig-Haro object.The outflows from this forming star can extend for light years, NASA said. It creates shockwaves and emits light as it cools.When NASAs retired Spitzer Space Telescope observed it in 2006, scientists nicknamed Herbig-Haro 49/50 (HH 49/50) the Cosmic Tornado for its helical appearance, but they were uncertain about the nature of the fuzzy object at the tip of the tornado, the space agency explained. With its higher imaging resolution, Webb provides a different visual impression of HH 49/50 by revealing fine features of the shocked regions in the outflow, uncovering the fuzzy object to be a distant spiral galaxy, and displaying a sea of distant background galaxies.RELATED STORY | Saturn's iconic rings will disappear in a rare celestial eventNASA said this particular Herbig-Haro is located in the Chamaeleon I Cloud complex, which is one of the nearest active star formation regions in our Milky Way.The cloud complex is similar to the environment that our Sun formed in, according to NASA. ...read more read less