Hubble captures the dramatic jets of a baby star

By Georgina Torbet March 26, 2024 2:28PM

A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows the drama that unfolds as a new star is born. Within a swirling cloud of dust and gas, a newly formed star is giving off powerful jets that blast away material and cut through the nearby dust of the surrounding nebula to create this stunning vista.

The image shows a system called FS Tau, located 450 light-years away in a region called Taurus-Auriga. Within this region are many stellar nurseries with new stars forming, making it a favorite target for astronomers studying star formation. But this particular system stands out for the dramatic nature of its newborn star, which has formed an epic structure called a Herbig-Haro object.

FS Tau is a multi-star system made up of FS Tau A, the bright star-like object near the middle of the image, and FS Tau B (Haro 6-5B), the bright object to the far right that is partially obscured by a dark, vertical lane of dust. The young objects are surrounded by softly illuminated gas and dust of this stellar nursery. The system is only about 2.8 million years old, very young for a star system. Our Sun, by contrast, is about 4.6 billion years old. — FS Tau is a multi-star system made up of FS Tau A, the bright star-like object near the middle of the image, and FS Tau B (Haro 6-5B), the bright object to the far right that is partially obscured by a dark, vertical lane of dust. The young objects are surrounded by the softly illuminated gas and dust of this stellar nursery. The system is only about 2.8 million years old, very young for a star system. Our sun, by contrast, is about 4.6 billion years old. NASA, ESA, K. Stapelfeldt (NASA JPL), G. Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)

A Herbig-Haro object is the structure created by jets of material coming from a young star. A star forms from clouds of dust and gas when this material clumps together to form a small knot. Over time, this knot attracts more and more material due to gravity, until it eventually collapses to form a core and becomes a protostar. As the protostar is dense, it attracts even more material due to gravity, growing over time and getting hotter as the material rubs together, creating friction. However, the star isn’t yet creating its own heat via fusion, so it isn’t yet a main sequence star like our sun.

The growing protostar can still become very hot though, with heat generated by the collapsing of the dust cloud and the gradual accretion of matter. This heat gives the protostar enough energy to shine, even though it isn’t creating its own heat and light from fusion yet. And with this energy, the protostar can eject two superfast jets of matter, each coming from the opposite direction. These jets of gas move so quickly that they collide with nearby dust and gas to create illumination — and it’s these jets that define a Herbig-Haro object.

The object FS Tau is unusual in that the protostar is giving off an asymmetrical double-sided jet, thought to be because matter is being expelled at different rates. It is also a binary system, with the Herbig-Haro object FS Tau B making up one half of a pair of stars along with FS Tau A, the bright object near the center of this image.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics

Tech News

Georgina Torbet

Space Writer

Georgina is the Digital Trends space writer, covering human space exploration, planetary science, and cosmology. She…

Space

The 60 best space photos of all time from Nasa, Hubble, and more

This landscape of “mountains” and “valleys” speckled with glittering stars is actually the edge of a nearby, young, star-forming region called NGC 3324 in the Carina Nebula. Captured in infrared light by NASA’s new James Webb Space Telescope, this image reveals for the first time previously invisible areas of star birth.

We're living through a golden age of space exploration, from rovers landing on Mars to astronauts living on board the International Space Station to the most complex and capable telescopes ever devised sending back stunning images of the cosmos. With technology like the high definition cameras on the Perseverance rover and the incredible sensitive infrared detectors on the James Webb Space Telescope, we're getting new views of the world beyond our own planet every day.

Some images of space stay entrenched in the public imagination, like the famous Pale blue Dot photos from 1990. It shows Earth as seen by the Voyager spacecraft just minutes before its camera was turned off. Traveling beyond the orbit of Pluto, the image shows the view when Voyager turned back around and viewed Earth -- the tiny, almost imperceptible dot seen against the emptiness of space.

Space

Small exoplanet could be hot and steamy according to Hubble

This is an artist’s conception of the exoplanet GJ 9827d, the smallest exoplanet where water vapour has been detected in its atmosphere. The planet could be an example of potential planets with water-rich atmospheres elsewhere in our galaxy. It is a rocky world, only about twice Earth’s diameter. It orbits the red dwarf star GJ 9827. Two inner planets in the system are on the left. The background stars are plotted as they would be seen to the unaided eye looking back toward our Sun, which itself is too faint to be seen. The blue star at upper right is Regulus, the yellow star at bottom centre is Denebola, and the blue star at bottom right is Spica. The constellation Leo is on the left, and Virgo is on the right. Both constellations are distorted from our Earth-bound view from 97 light-years away.

One of the big topics in exoplanet research right now is not just finding exoplanets but also looking at their atmospheres. Tools like the James Webb Space Telescope are designed to allow researchers to look at the light coming from distant stars and see how it is filtered as it passes by exoplanets, allowing them to learn about the composition of their atmospheres. But scientists are also using older telescopes like the Hubble Space Telescope for similar research -- and Hubble recently identified water vapor in an exoplanet atmosphere.

“This would be the first time that we can directly show through an atmospheric detection that these planets with water-rich atmospheres can actually exist around other stars,” said researcher Björn Benneke of the Université de Montréal in a statement. “This is an important step toward determining the prevalence and diversity of atmospheres on rocky planets."

Space

Hear the otherworldly sounds of interacting galaxies with this Hubble sonification

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases a resplendent pair of galaxies known as Arp 140.

When two different galaxies get close enough together that they begin interacting, they are sometimes given a shared name. That's the case with a newly released image from the Hubble Space Telescope that shows two galaxies, NGC 274 and NGC 275, which are together known as Arp 140. not only is there a new image of the pair, but there's also a sonification available so you can hear the image as well as see it.

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope image showcases a resplendent pair of galaxies known as Arp 140. NASA/ESA/R. Foley (University of California - Santa Cruz)/Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA/Catholic University of America)