HH1/HH2: Star Jets
Explanation:
A cloud of interstellar gas and dust collapses and
a star is born.
At its core temperatures rise,
a nuclear furnace ignites,
and a rotating
dusty disk forms
surrounding the newborn star.
According to current understanding,
as material continues to fall onto the disk it is heated and blasted
back out
along the disk's axis of rotation, forming a pair of
high speed jets.
This Hubble Space Telescope image shows two nebulosities
at the ends of opposing jets from a young star.
The bright blobs at either end are where the jet material
has slammed into interstellar gas.
Tip to tip, the distance is about one light-year.
Located near
the Orion Nebula,
these nebulosities have
catalog designations
HH1 and HH2 for their discoverers astronomers
George Herbig and Guillermo Haro.
The nascent star which produced the jets is in the middle, hidden
by a cloud of obscuring dust.
Yet the structures and details visible in
the star jets
offer clues to events which also occured in our own Solar System -
when the Sun was formed from a collapsing interstellar cloud
4.5 billion years ago.
Authors & editors:
Robert Nemiroff
(MTU) &
Jerry Bonnell
(USRA)
NASA Web Site Statements, Warnings,
and Disclaimers
NASA Official: Jay Norris.
Specific
rights apply.
A service of:
LHEA at
NASA /
GSFC
& Michigan Tech. U.
