Hubble views of three stellar jets | 6/06/1995 | ||
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These
NASA Hubble Space Telescope views of gaseous jets from three newly forming
stars show a new level of detail in the star formation process, and are
helping to solve decade-old questions about the secrets of star birth. Jets
are a common "exhaust product" of the dynamics of star formation. |
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Image Credit: [upper left] C. Burrows (STScI & ESA), the WFPC 2 Investigation Definition Team, and NASA; [upper right] J. Hester (Arizona State University), the WFPC 2 Investigation Definition Team, and NASA; [bottom] J. Morse/STScI, and NASA. | |||
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These
NASA Hubble Space Telescope views of gaseous jets from three newly forming
stars show a new level of detail in the star formation process, and are
helping to solve decade-old questions about the secrets of star birth. Jets
are a common "exhaust product" of the dynamics of star formation. They are
blasted away from a disk of gas and dust falling onto an embryonic star.
[upper left] - This view of a protostellar object called HH-30 reveals
an edge-on disk of dust encircling a newly forming star. Light from the
forming star illuminates the top and bottom surfaces of the disk, making
them visible, while the star itself is hidden behind the densest parts
of the disk. The reddish jet emanates from the inner region of the disk,
and possibly directly from the star itself. Hubble's detailed view shows,
for the first time, that the jet expands for several billion miles from
the star, but then stays confined to a narrow beam. The protostar is 450
light-years away in the constellation Taurus. [upper right] - This view of a different and more distant jet in object
HH-34 shows a remarkable beaded structure. Once thought to be a hydrodynamic
effect (similar to shock diamonds in a jet aircraft exhaust), this structure
is actually produced by a machine-gun-like blast of "bullets" of dense
gas ejected from the star at speeds of one-half million miles per hour.
This structure suggests the star goes through episodic "fits" of construction
where chunks of material fall onto the star from a surrounding disk. The
protostar is 1,500 light- years away and in the vicinity of the Orion
Nebula, a nearby star birth region. |
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[bottom]
- This view of a three trillion mile-long jet called HH-47 reveals a very
complicated jet pattern that indicates the star (hidden inside a dust cloud
near the left edge of the image) might be wobbling, possibly caused by the
gravitational pull of a companion star. Hubble's detailed view shows that
the jet has burrowed a cavity through the dense gas cloud and now travels
at high speed into interstellar space. Shock waves form when the jet collides
with interstellar gas, causing the jet to glow. The white filaments on the
left reflect light from the obscured newborn star. The HH-47 system is 1,500
light-years away, and lies at the edge of the Gum Nebula, possibly an ancient
supernova remnant which can be seen from Earth's southern hemisphere. Credit: J. Morse/STScI, and NASA The scale in the bottom left corner of each picture represents 93 billion miles, or 1,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. All images were taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 in visible light. The HH designation stands for "Herbig-Haro" object -- the name for bright patches of nebulosity which appear to be moving away from associated protostars. |
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