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The nested morphology of disk winds from young stars revealed by JWST/NIRSpec observations

Nature Astronomy volume 9, pages 81–89 (2025)Cite this article

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Abstract

Radially extended disk winds could be the key to unlocking how protoplanetary disks accrete and how planets form and migrate. A distinctive characteristic is their nested morphology of velocity and chemistry. Here we report James Webb Space Telescope near-infrared spectrograph spectro-imaging of four young stars with edge-on disks, three of which have already dispersed their natal envelopes. For each source, a fast collimated jet traced by [Fe ii] is nested inside a hollow cavity within wider lower-velocity H2. In one case, a hollow structure is also seen in CO ro-vibrational (v = 1 → 0) emission but with a wider opening angle than the H2, and both of those are nested inside an Atacama Large Millimeter Array CO (J = 2 → 1) cone with an even wider opening angle. This nested morphology, even for sources with no envelope, strongly supports theoretical predictions for wind-driven accretion and underscores the need for theoretical work to assess the role of winds in the formation and evolution of planetary systems.

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Fig. 1: Spectra integrated over the NIRSpec IFU.
Fig. 2: Composite NIRSpec images.
Fig. 3: Traces of the outer edges of the [Fe ii] at 1.644 μm and H2 S(9) emission.
Fig. 4: Emission structures of [Fe ii], H2 and CO in HH 30.

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Data availability

The JWST data used in this paper can be found at the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescope under programme IDs 1621 (ref. 56) and 1128 (ref. 57). The first programme covers the four edge-on disks, and the second has the commissioning data used to generate the NIRSpec PSF. Both raw data and fully processed pipeline data can be downloaded from the archive. The spectra integrated over the NIRSpec IFU (Fig. 1) as well as the line-only and continuum maps (Fig. 2) are available via Figshare at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.26387977 (ref. 58).

Code availability

The data were reduced with the JWST calibration pipeline v.1.13.4.dev19+gbddb39c6. Upon request, the first author (I.P.) will provide the Python scripts used to analyse the data and generate the figures.

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Acknowledgements

This work is based on observations made with the NASA/ESA/CSA JWST. The data were obtained from the Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes at the Space Telescope Science Institute, which is operated by the Association of Universities for Research in Astronomy, Inc., under NASA contract NAS 5-03127 for JWST. These observations are associated with the general observer cycle 1 programme 1621 (PI I. Pascucci). I.P. and N.S.B. acknowledge partial support from NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute (GO Grant No. JWST-GO-01621.001, PI I.P.). S.C. acknowledges funding from the funding from the Scientific Council of Observatoire de Paris and the national programme Physique et Chimie du Milieu Interstellaire of Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, a programme operated through the Institut National des Sciences de l'Univers with Institut National de Chimie and Institut National de Physique and co-funded by the Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique et aux Energies Alternatives and Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales. K.S. and D.S. acknowledge support from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 Framework Program through ERC Advanced Grant Origins 83 24 28, PI Th. Henning. G.D. acknowledges support from the ERC under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme (Grant Agreement No. 101053020, Project Dust2Planets, PI F. Ménard). M.V. acknowledges support from the ERC under the European Union’s Horizon Europe Research & Innovation Programme (Grant Agreement No. 101039651, DiscEvol, PI G. Rosotti). I.P. thanks D. Deng and F. Long for an initial exploration of the ALMA data for our sources. We acknowledge the use of the following packages: api, Astropy, NumPy, SciPy, sklearn, Matplotlib and pandas.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, The University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Ilaria Pascucci, Naman S. Bajaj & Bennett N. Skinner

  2. Instruments Division, Space Telescope Science Institute, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Tracy L. Beck & James Muzerolle Page

  3. Observatoire de Paris - PSL University, Sorbonne Université, LERMA, CNRS, Paris, France

    Sylvie Cabrit

  4. Univ. Grenoble Alpes, CNRS, IPAG, Grenoble, France

    Sylvie Cabrit, Fabien Louvet & Gaspard Duchêne

  5. Five College Astronomy Department, Smith College, Northampton, MA, USA

    Suzan Edwards

  6. NSF, NOIRLab, Tucson, AZ, USA

    Joan R. Najita

  7. Department of Physics and Astronomy, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

    Bennett N. Skinner

  8. Carl Sagan Center, SETI Institute, Mountain View, CA, USA

    Uma Gorti & Maxime Ruaud

  9. Ames Research Center, NASA, Moffett Field, CA, USA

    Uma Gorti

  10. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, NY, USA

    Colette Salyk

  11. Department of Physics and Astronomy, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, USA

    Sean D. Brittain

  12. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK

    Sebastiaan Krijt

  13. Max-Planck-Institut für Astronomie, Heidelberg, Germany

    Kamber Schwarz & Dmitry Semenov

  14. Department of Chemistry, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich, NY, Germany

    Dmitry Semenov

  15. Department of Astronomy, University of California, Berkeley, CA, USA

    Gaspard Duchêne

  16. Dipartimento di Fisica, Università degli Studi di Milano, Milan, Italy

    Marion Villenave

Authors
  1. Ilaria Pascucci
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  2. Tracy L. Beck
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  6. Fabien Louvet
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Contributions

I.P. led the proposal, carried out the analysis and wrote the paper. T.B., S.C., S.E., J.N., U.G., C.S., S.B., S.K., J.M., M.R., K.S. and D.S. contributed to the planning and writing of the JWST proposal. N.S.B. used the JWST pipeline to perform the data reduction. T.B. assisted in planning the observations, in the data reduction and in the PSF deconvolution of the reduced data cubes. F.L. provided the ALMA CO (2 → 1) data for HH 30. B.S. contributed to the initial script used to generate the CO (v = 1 → 0) map and the RGB figures. S.C., S.E., J.N. and U.G. made substantial contributions to the interpretation of the results. All authors participated in the discussion of the results or commented on the paper.

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Correspondence to Ilaria Pascucci.

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Pascucci, I., Beck, T.L., Cabrit, S. et al. The nested morphology of disk winds from young stars revealed by JWST/NIRSpec observations. Nat Astron 9, 81–89 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41550-024-02385-7

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