The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has solved the 19-year mystery of the "Cosmic Tornado," a strange, twisteresque object some 630 light years from Earth. First seen by the Spitzer Space Telescope in 2006, the tornado is what scientists call a "Herbig-Haro" object: an energetic outflow associated with the formation of a nearby star.

Credit: NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI On the back end of a telescope, looks can be deceiving. Two decades ago, astronomers spied something strange with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope that they dubbed ...

Webb’s exquisite details reveal a chance, random alignment of a protostellar outflow and a distant spiral galaxy. When we observe the universe, we're looking at a three-dimensional space projected onto a two-dimensional image.