LL Orionis: When Cosmic Winds Collide
Explanation:
What created this great arc in space?
This
arcing, graceful structure is actually a
bow shock
about half a light-year across, created as the wind from young star LL Orionis
collides with the
Orion Nebula flow.
Adrift in Orion's
stellar nursery
and still in its formative years, variable star
LL Orionis produces a wind more energetic than
the wind from our own
middle-aged sun.
As the fast stellar wind runs into slow moving gas a shock front is
formed, analogous to the
bow
wave of a
boat
moving through water or a plane traveling at
supersonic
speed.
The slower gas is flowing away from the
Orion Nebula's hot central star cluster, the
Trapezium, located off the lower right hand edge
of the picture.
In three dimensions,
LL Ori's wrap-around shock front is shaped like a
bowl that appears brightest when viewed along the "bottom" edge.
The complex stellar nursery in Orion shows a myriad of similar
fluid
shapes associated with
star formation, including
the bow shock surrounding a faint star at the upper right.
Part of
a mosaic
covering the Great Nebula in Orion,
this composite color image was recorded
in 1995 by the Hubble Space Telescope.
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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.
