Dream big, little star. 👶⭐
An energetic outburst from an infant star streaks across this image from the @NASAHubble Space Telescope. This stellar tantrum – produced by an extremely young star in the earliest phase of formation – consists of an incandescent jet of gas traveling at supersonic speeds. The colorful wisps, found in the lower left of the image, are painted onto the sky by a young star swaddled in the partially illuminated cloud of obscuring dust seen to the upper right.
Pictured punching through the enshrouding dust is an extremely hot, blue jet of gas released by the young star. As this jet speeds through space, it collides with cooler surrounding material. The result is the colorful object to the lower left, produced as the cooler material is heated by the jet.
This wispy object resides near the Orion Nebular approximately 1,400 light-years away from Earth. Only a fraction of the entire jet extending between the infant star and the wispy object— called a Herbig-Haro object — is visible using the Hubble telescope. But with the introduction of @NASAWebb, which observes at predominantly infrared wavelengths, we will be able to peer into the dusty envelopes surrounding still-forming infant stars such as this, revolutionizing the study of jets from these young stars.
Credit: @europeanspaceagency/Hubble & NASA
#Astrophotography#Hubble#Webb#Star#Astronomy#Space#Cosmos#SpaceTelescope#Dusty#BabyStar#Baby