When material from more recent ejections runs into older material, it changes the shape of these lobes. Much of this material was shot out from those stars as they repeatedly ingest and eject the gas and dust that immediately surround them over thousands of years. The most striking details are the two-sided lobes that fan out from the actively forming central stars, represented in fiery orange. The disk is not visible, but its shadow can be seen in the two dark, conical regions surrounding the central stars. They are buried deeply in a disk of gas and dust that feeds their growth as they continue to gain mass. To find them, trace the bright pink and red diffraction spikes until you hit the center: The stars are within the orange-white splotch.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has captured the “antics” of a pair of actively forming young stars, known as Herbig-Haro 46/47, in high-resolution near-infrared light.
