UNITED STATES: The constellation Orion has one of the most stunning and amazing areas of the night sky. A huge cloud of interstellar dust and gas is floating between Alnitak, Saif, and Rigel stars.
The Orion Nebula is one of the Milky Way’s most investigated and captured celestial bodies and the birthplace of new stars.
It is so close and big, stretching 24 light years, that it may be seen without a telescope. These magnificent clouds are an excellent laboratory for studying star formation because of their proximity (1,344 light-years from the Sun).
Simply zoom in and pay special attention to the details. In contrast to the velvety dark background of space, the Orion Nebula appears as a frothy flurry of colour in this just published Hubble photograph. But the newborn star IX Ori, which sits at the core, has made a rare and stunning cosmic contact.
The Herbig-Haro object is that contact, designated as HH 505 in astronomy. They must be produced under very specific circumstances. You first require a young star, It develops when dense nodes in molecular clouds, like the star nurseries in Orion, swirl and collapse under the weight of their mass. It gathers up material from the surrounding clouds as it rotates, allowing the newborn stars to expand.
Strong plasma jets can be launched from the stellar poles as this material develops in young stars. It is hypothesised that part of the matter orbiting the star is redirected along the lines of the star’s external magnetic field to the poles. When the material reaches the poles, it can be catapulted at extraordinary speeds thanks to these magnetic field lines acting as particle accelerators.
When this beam, moving at incredible speeds, aggressively strikes the surrounding gas, unexpectedly heating it to the point of glowing, a Herbig-Haro object is created. As a result, the infant star appears to be accompanied by two brilliant sticks of light.
Astronomers can see these dynamic structures to better understand how newborn stars transport stuff through the clouds that surround them. The amount of gas and dust that nourishes developing stars is cut off, affecting mature stars’ size.
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