Hubble Captures Two Beautiful Herbig-Haro Objects

A new image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope show HH46 and HH47, two Herbig-Haro objects — small-scale shock regions associated with newborn stars — located 1,400 light-years away in the constellation of Vela.

Herbig-Haro objects are transient phenomena — traveling away from the star that created them, at a speed of up to 250,000 kmh (155,000 mph) they disappear into nothingness within a few tens of thousands of years.

They come in a wide array of shapes, the basic configuration is usually the same. Twin jets of heated gas, ejected in opposite directions from a forming star, stream through interstellar space.

These outflows are fueled by gas falling onto the young star, which is surrounded by a disk of dust and gas.

Source

Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / B. Nisini.

This Hubble image shows two Herbig-Haro objects HH46 and HH47. The color image was made from separate exposures taken in the visible and infrared regions of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3).

It is based on data obtained through six filters. The color results from assigning different hues to each monochromatic image associated with an individual filter

Source / Image Courtesy

This video shows the evolution over time of Herbig-Haro object HH 47, a jet expelled from a newborn star in the southern constellation of Vela.