Talk about birth in the fast lane. Fresh observations of HH 46/47 — an area well-known for hosting a baby star — demonstrate material from the star pushing against the surrounding gas at supersonic speeds.
“HH” stands for Herbig-Haro, a type of object created “when jets shot out by newborn stars collide with surrounding material, producing small, bright, nebulous regions,” NASA stated. It’s a little hard to see what’s inside these regions, however, as they’re clouded by debris (specifically, gas and dust).
The Spitzer space telescope (which looks in infrared) and the massive Chilean Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) are both designed to look through the stuff to see what’s within. Here’s what they’ve spotted:
– ALMA: The telescope is showing that the gas is moving apart faster than ever believed, which could have echoes on how the star cloud is forming generally. “In turn, the extra turbulence could have an impact on whether and how other stars might form in this gaseous, dusty, and thus fertile, ground for star-making,” NASA added.
– Spitzer: Two supersonic blobs are emerging from the star in the middle and pushing against the gas, creating the big bubbles you can see here. The right-aiming blob has a lot more material to push through than the left one, “offering a handy compare-and-contrast setup for how the outflows from a developing star interact with their surroundings,” NASA stated.
“Young stars like our sun need to remove some of the gas collapsing in on them to become stable, and HH 46/47 is an excellent laboratory for studying this outflow process,” stated Alberto Noriega-Crespo, a scientist at the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology.
“Thanks to Spitzer, the HH 46/47 outflow is considered one of the best examples of a jet being present with an expanding bubble-like structure.”
The ALMA observations of HH 46/47 were first revealed in detail this summer, in an Astrophysical Journal publication.
Source: NASA
Thanks for another fascinating story, Elizabeth. While the outflow structures are interesting, I find the segmented ring near the center to be the most intriguing. Is anyone speculating on the mechanics behind this?
Is this the only size image you have for Pintrest? Can you load an higher res one? Pretty please?
You can find a big TIFF image on the right-hand side of this page: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/spaceimages/details.php?id=PIA17555
Preprint paper (PDF): ALMA Observations of the HH 46/47 Molecular Outflow.
The green “segmented ring” visible in the first photo is an imaging artifact from the Spitzer Space Telescope camera/optics, similar to that seen around the two bright stars above HH 46/47.
Good call Jon, thanks for the clarification.