NASA's most powerful telescope, the James Webb Space Telescope, captured celestial fireworks around a newborn star. Photo.

In a new image captured by NASA's high-powered James Webb Space Telescope, the cosmos appears to be alive with celestial fireworks. This fiery hourglass shows the scene around a newborn star.

The image shows the central protostar growing and accumulating material from a thin protoplanetary disk, which is visible from the edge as a dark line. The James Webb Mid-Infrared Survey Instrument discovered this protostar 460 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus, writes Phys.

According to NASA's Instagram page, a protostar is a cluster of interstellar gas and dust whose gravitational pull causes it to contract and form a star. It is a relatively young object, approximately 100 thousand years old, that is still surrounded by its parent molecular cloud, or large region of gas and dust. You can also see red, yellow, orange, blue, and green stars and galaxies scattered throughout the image.

The US space agency notes that the striking photo was taken by "James Webb" on the Fourth of July, the day of independence of the United States. The protostar seems to have deliberately dressed itself in red, white, and blue - the colors of the US flag. The more diffuse blue light and thread-like structures in the image come from organic compounds known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). The red color in the center of the image is the intense thick layer of gas and dust surrounding the protostar. The area in between, shown in white, is a mixture of PAHs, ionized gas, and other molecules.

These beautiful flashes around the protostar won't last forever. As it continues to age and emit energy jets, it will absorb, destroy, and push away most of this molecular cloud. When the protostar finishes gaining mass, this amazing spectacle around it will stop.

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