Discovery of a Collimated Jet from the Low-luminosity Protostar IRAS 16253−2429 in a Quiescent Accretion Phase with the JWST

Investigating Protostellar Accretion (IPA) is a JWST Cycle 1 GO program that uses NIRSpec integral field units and MIRI Medium Resolution Spectrograph to obtain 2.9-28 μm spectral cubes of young, deeply embedded protostars with luminosities of 0.2-10,000 L _⊙ and central masses of 0.15-12 M _⊙. In this Letter, we report the discovery of a highly collimated atomic jet from the Class 0 protostar IRAS 16253−2429, the lowest-luminosity source (L _bol = 0.2 L _⊙) in the IPA program. The collimated jet is detected in multiple [Fe ii] lines and [Ne ii], [Ni ii], and H i lines but not in molecular emission. The atomic jet has a velocity of about 169 ± 15 km s⁻¹, after correcting for inclination. The width of the jet increases with distance from the central protostar from 23 to 60 au, corresponding to an opening angle of 2.°6 ± 0.°5. By comparing the measured flux ratios of various fine-structure lines to those predicted by simple shock models, we derive a shock speed of 54 km s⁻¹ and a preshock density of 2.0 × 10³ cm⁻³ at the base of the jet. From these quantities and using a suite of jet models and extinction laws, we compute a mass-loss rate between 0.4 and 1.1 ×10⁻¹⁰ M _⊙ yr ⁻¹. The low mass-loss rate is consistent with simultaneous measurements of low mass accretion rate (2.4 ± 0.8 × 10⁻⁹ M _⊙ yr⁻¹) for IRAS 16253−2429 from JWST observations, indicating that the protostar is in a quiescent accretion phase. Our results demonstrate that very low-mass protostars can drive highly collimated, atomic jets, even during the quiescent phase.