NASA has released a beautiful photo taken by the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope of the Herbig-Haro (HH) object 505.
This Hubble image shows HH 505, a Herbig-Haro object located some 1,000 light-years away in the constellation of Orion. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / J. Bally / M.H. Özsaraç.
Herbig-Haro objects are small bright patches of nebulosity associated with newborn stars.
They are formed when hot gas ejected by a newborn star collides with the gas and dust around it at speeds of up to 250,000 kmh (155,000 mph), creating bright shock waves.
These objects come in a wide array of shapes, the basic configuration is usually the same: twin jets of heated gas, ejected in opposite directions from a forming star, stream through interstellar space.
Herbig-Haro objects are transient phenomena — they disappear into nothingness within a few tens of thousands of years.
These objects were first observed in the 19th century by the American astronomer Sherburne Wesley Burnham, but were not recognized as being a distinct type of emission nebula until the 1940s.
The first astronomers to study them in detail were George Herbig and Guillermo Haro, after whom they have been named.
“Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars,” Hubble astronomers said.
“They are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from these newborn stars form shockwaves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds.”
“The outflows themselves are visible as gracefully curving structures at the top and bottom of this image of HH 505, and are distorted into sinuous curves by their interaction with the large-scale flow of gas and dust from the core of the Orion Nebula.”
In the case of HH 505, these outflows originate from a young star called IX Ori.
Also known as TIC 427374014 or Haro 4-115, this star lies on the outskirts of the Orion Nebula around 1,000 light-years from Earth.
“The Orion Nebula is awash in intense ultraviolet radiation from bright young stars,” the researchers said.
“The shockwaves formed by the outflows are brightly visible to Hubble, but the slower-moving currents of stellar material are also highlighted by this radiation.”
“That allows us to directly observe jets and outflows and learn more about their structures.”
The color image of HH 505 was made from separate exposures taken in the visible region of the spectrum with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS).
Three filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter.
“The Orion Nebula is a dynamic region of dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming, and is the closest region of massive star formation to Earth,” the scientists said.
“As a result, it is one of the most scrutinized areas of the night sky and has often been a target for Hubble.”
“This observation was also part of a spellbinding Hubble mosaic of the Orion Nebula, which combined 520 ACS images in five different colors to create the sharpest view ever taken of the region.”
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