One of the most beautiful and spectacular regions of the night sky is in the constellation Orion.
Between the stars Alnitak, Saif, and Rigel, floats a large, thick cloud of interstellar dust and gas. It is the Orion Nebula, a nest of material in which stars are born and one of the most studied and photographed objects in the Milky Way.
At 24 light years, it is so close and large that it is visible to the naked eye.
Because of its relative proximity (about 1,344 light years from the Sun), this spectacular cloud is an important laboratory for understanding star formation.
You just have to get up close and look closely at the details.
New Hubble image of the Orion Nebula and HH 505. (ESA/Hubble and NASA, J. Bally, MH Özsaraç)
This new Hubble image release of the Orion Nebula looks like delicately tinted wisps of cloud peacefully making their cloud against the velvety background of space… but in the middle is a rare and wondrous cosmic interaction, unleashed by the baby star IX Ori.
This interaction, called HH 505, is what is known as a Herbig-Haro object. Forming them requires a set of very particular circumstances.
First, you need a baby star. These form when a dense knot in a molecular cloud, like Orion’s stellar nursery, collapses, spins, under its own mass. As it spins, material from the surrounding cloud is rolled up, allowing the baby star to grow.
As this material accumulates in the baby star, powerful jets of plasma can be launched from the star’s poles. Some of the material orbiting the star is thought to be deflected along the star’s external magnetic field lines toward the poles. These magnetic field lines act like a particle accelerator so that when the material reaches the poles, it is launched at incredible speeds.
The yellow circle shows the location of HH 505 within the Orion Nebula. (NASA, ESA, M. Robberto/STScI)
A Herbig-Haro object forms when these jets, traveling at incredibly high speeds, collide hard with the surrounding gas, heating it so that it glows brightly. This creates what appear to be two bright bars of light emanating from the baby star.
These structures change rapidly, so astronomers can study them to understand how baby stars blow away material from the cloud around them. This cuts off the supply of gas and dust that fuels the growing stars and determines the size of the adult star.
Couldn’t this stunning piece of sky be more beautiful?
The new image can be downloaded in wallpaper sizes from the Hubble website.