The stars, they aligned 🎶   See how those bright red, clumpy streaks in the top left are all slanted in the same direction to the same degree? They show aligned protostellar outflows, or jets of gas from newborn stars. NASAWebb captures this phenomenon for the first time.   “Astronomers have long assumed that as clouds collapse to form stars, the stars will tend to spin in the same direction,” said principal investigator Klaus Pontoppidan of NASAJPL. “However, this has not been seen so directly before. These aligned, elongated structures are a historical record of the fundamental way that stars are born.”   Previously, the objects appeared as blobs or were invisible in optical wavelengths. Webb’s sensitive infrared vision was able to pierce through the thick dust, resolving the stars and their outflows.   This area is part of the Serpens Nebula. Located 1,300 light-years from Earth, it’s only 1-2 million years old — very young in cosmic terms! It’s home to a dense cluster of newly for...