Like Sands Through the Hourglass… – NASA

Two actively forming stars are responsible for the shimmering hourglass-shaped ejections of gas and dust that gleam in orange, blue, and purple in this representative color image captured by NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. This star system, called Lynds 483, is named for American astronomer Beverly T. Lynds, who published extensive catalogs of “dark” and “bright” nebulae in the early 1960s.

The two protostars are at the center of the hourglass shape, in an opaque horizontal disk of cold gas and dust that fits within a single pixel. Much farther out, above and below the flattened disk where dust is thinner, the bright light from the stars shines through the gas and dust, forming large semi-transparent orange cones.

Learn what the incredibly fine details in this image reveal.

Image credit: NASA, ESA, CSA, STScI