The protostellar phase marks the earliest stage of star formation. Although short-lived (< 0.5 Myr), protostars play an important role in cosmic evolution. Within the dusty envelopes that shroud them, the complex, highly time dependent processes of infall, accretion and outflow shape the IMF, set the chemical initial conditions for planet formation, and may regulate star formation on cloud scales. Despite its importance, early protostellar evolution is inadequately explored, particularly in the IR wavelengths, because protostars in their primary accretion phase are deeply embedded and are not readily accessible for observations with existing facilities. JWST spectral imaging is fundamentally transforming our understanding of accretion and jets/outflows in protostars and their interaction with the surrounding envelopes and star forming clouds. I will present early results on protostellar evolution from JWST, primarily focussing on two JWST GO programs that I am involved in: Investigating Protostellar Accretion (IPA) and Outflows across the mass spectrum (Cycle 1) and High angular resolution observations of stellar Emergence in Filamentary Environments (HEFE) (Cycle 3). I will then briefly discuss what we have learned about the earliest stages of star formation from the JWST so far.
Prof. Manoj Puravankara is a faculty member at the Dept. of Astronomy & Astrophysics, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Mumbai. Before joining TIFR, he worked as a Research Associate at the University of Rochester, Rochester, NY, USA. He was a postdoctoral fellow at the Academia Sinica Institute for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Taipei, Taiwan, and the Inter-University Center for Astronomy & Astrophysics, Pune, India. He obtained his Ph. D. in 2005 from the Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, India. His primary research interests are in star and planet formation, and he is currently working on young stellar objects and protoplanetary disks and developing instruments to study them.