English: A pair of jets protrude outwards in near-perfect symmetry in this image of Herbig-Haro object (HH) 212, taken by ESO’s already decommissioned Infrared Spectrometer And Array Camera (ISAAC).
The object lies in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter) in a dense molecular star-forming region, not far from the famous Horsehead Nebula. In regions like this, clouds of dust and gas collapse under the force of gravity, spinning faster and faster and becoming hotter and hotter until a young star ignites at the cloud’s centre. Any leftover material swirling around the newborn protostar comes together to form an accretion disc that will, under the right circumstances, eventually evolve to form the base material for the creation of planets, asteroids and comets.
Although this process is still not fully understood, it is common that a protostar and its accretion disc, as seen here edge-on, are the cause of the jets in this image. The star at the centre of HH 212 is indeed a very young star, at only a few thousand years old. Its jets are remarkably symmetric, with several knots appearing at relatively stable intervals. This stability suggests that the jet pulses vary quite regularly, and over a short timescale — maybe even as short as 30 years! Further out from the centre, large bow shocks spread out into interstellar space, caused by ejected gas colliding with dust and gas at speeds of several hundred kilometres per second.
This media was created by the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Their website states: "Unless specifically noted, the images, videos, and music distributed on the public ESO website, along with the texts of press releases, announcements, pictures of the week, blog posts and captions, are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided the credit is clear and visible." To the uploader: You must provide a link (URL) to the original file and the authorship information if available.
verbreitet werden – vervielfältigt, verbreitet und öffentlich zugänglich gemacht werden
neu zusammengestellt werden – abgewandelt und bearbeitet werden
Zu den folgenden Bedingungen:
Namensnennung – Du musst angemessene Urheber- und Rechteangaben machen, einen Link zur Lizenz beifügen und angeben, ob Änderungen vorgenommen wurden. Diese Angaben dürfen in jeder angemessenen Art und Weise gemacht werden, allerdings nicht so, dass der Eindruck entsteht, der Lizenzgeber unterstütze gerade dich oder deine Nutzung besonders.
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0CC BY 4.0 Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 truetrue
Kurzbeschreibungen
Ergänze eine einzeilige Erklärung, was diese Datei darstellt.
Diese Datei enthält weitere Informationen (beispielsweise Exif-Metadaten), die in der Regel von der Digitalkamera oder dem verwendeten Scanner stammen. Durch nachträgliche Bearbeitung der Originaldatei können einige Details verändert worden sein.
Namensnennung/Veröffentlicher
ESO/M. McCaughrean
Quelle
European Southern Observatory
Kurztitel
Outbursts from a newborn star
Bildtitel
A pair of jets protrude outwards in near-perfect symmetry in this image of Herbig-Haro object (HH) 212, taken by ESO’s already decommissioned Infrared Spectrometer And Array Camera (ISAAC). The object lies in the constellation of Orion (The Hunter) in a dense molecular star-forming region, not far from the famous Horsehead Nebula. In regions like this, clouds of dust and gas collapse under the force of gravity, spinning faster and faster and becoming hotter and hotter until a young star ignites at the cloud’s centre. Any leftover material swirling around the newborn protostar comes together to form an accretion disc that will, under the right circumstances, eventually evolve to form the base material for the creation of planets, asteroids and comets. Although this process is still not fully understood, it is common that a protostar and its accretion disc, as seen here edge-on, are the cause of the jets in this image. The star at the centre of HH 212 is indeed a very young star, at only a few thousand years old. Its jets are remarkably symmetric, with several knots appearing at relatively stable intervals. This stability suggests that the jet pulses vary quite regularly, and over a short timescale — maybe even as short as 30 years! Further out from the centre, large bow shocks spread out into interstellar space, caused by ejected gas colliding with dust and gas at speeds of several hundred kilometres per second.