If we could take a picture of the sun when we were babies, it would look exactly like this.

The James Webb Space Telescope has imaged a newborn star spewing supersonic jets of gas from its poles. It is only a few tens of thousands of years old here, but when it grows up it will look a lot like our Sun.

Bright regions around newborn stars, as seen in the image, are called Herbig-Haro objects. This particular Herbig-Haro object is called Herbig-Haro (HH) 211. Located about 1,000 light years from Earth, it is one of the youngest and closest objects of its kind.

Herbig-Haro objects are formed when jets of gas from these newborn stars collide with the gas and dust around them, creating shock waves. By piercing through the gas and dust, Webb's sensitive infrared vision can detect heat emissions from the star's outflows and map the structure in unprecedented detail. Interestingly, Webb observations have also shown that the outgassing from this object is slower compared to more advanced baby stars.

Image description:

In the centre is a thin horizontal pinkish cloud known as Herbig-Haro 211, irregular with rounded ends and sloping from lower left to upper right. It occupies about two-thirds of the length of this angle, but is thinner and longer at the opposite angle. There is a dark spot in its centre. On either side of the dark spot are orangish-yellow and light blue clouds. In the centre of these clouds, a pink raised line passes through each lobe. At the tip of each lobe pink becomes the dominant colour. The lobe on the left is fatter. The lobe on the right is thinner and ends in a smaller pink semicircle. Just at the edge of this lobe is a slightly smaller pink semicircle, followed by a pink sponge-like blog. In the background are several bright stars, each with eight diffraction spikes extending out from the central bright spot.

Can we say we sort of saw our sun in its infancy?