{"id":349700,"date":"2026-01-16T01:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T15:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?guid=3de58c625964126e723cd4d7ff2940b7"},"modified":"2026-01-16T01:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T15:47:08","slug":"hubble-spies-stellar-blast-setting-clouds-ablaze-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/?p=349700","title":{"rendered":"Hubble Spies Stellar Blast Setting Clouds Ablaze"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n
\n
\"Narrow,<\/a><\/figure>
\n
Jets of ionized gas streak across a cosmic landscape from a newly forming star.<\/div>\n
NASA, ESA, and B. Reipurth (Planetary Science Institute); Processing: Gladys Kober (NASA\/Catholic University of America)<\/div>\n<\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

This new NASA Hubble Space Telescope<\/a> image captures a jet of gas from a forming star shooting across the dark expanse. The bright pink and green patches running diagonally through the image are HH 80\/81, a pair of Herbig-Haro (HH) objects previously observed by Hubble in 1995. The patch to the upper left is part of HH 81, and the bottom streak is part of HH 80.<\/p>\n

Herbig-Haro objects are bright, glowing regions that occur when jets of ionized gas ejected by a newly forming star collide with slower, previously ejected outflows of gas from that star. HH 80\/81\u2019s outflow stretches over 32 light-years, making it the largest protostellar outflow known. <\/p>\n

Protostars are fed by infalling gas from the surrounding environment, some of which can be seen in residual \u201caccretion disks\u201d orbiting the forming star.  Ionized material within these disks can interact with the protostars\u2019 strong magnetic fields, which channel some of the particles toward the pole and outward in the form of jets. <\/p>\n

As the jets eject material at high speeds, they can produce strong shock waves when the particles collide with previously ejected gas. These shocks heat the clouds of gas and excite the atoms, causing them to glow in what we see as HH objects.<\/p>\n

HH 80\/81 are the brightest HH objects known to exist. The source powering these luminous objects is the protostar IRAS 18162-2048. It\u2019s roughly 20 times the mass of the Sun, and it\u2019s the most massive protostar in the entire L291 molecular cloud. From Hubble data, astronomers measured the speed of parts of HH 80\/81 to be over 1,000 km\/s, the fastest recorded outflow in both radio and visual wavelengths from a young stellar object. Unusually, this is the only HH jet found that is driven by a young, very massive star, rather than a type of young, low-mass star. <\/p>\n

The sensitivity and resolution of Hubble\u2019s Wide Field Camera 3<\/a> was critical to astronomers, allowing them to study fine details, movements, and structural changes of these objects. The HH 80\/81 pair lies 5,500 light-years away within the Sagittarius constellation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This new NASA\u00a0Hubble Space Telescope\u00a0image captures a jet of gas from a forming star shooting across the dark expanse. The bright pink and green patches running diagonally through the image are HH 80\/81, a pair of Herbig-Haro (HH) objects previously observed by Hubble in 1995. The patch to the upper left is part of HH [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15675],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-349700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stars"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=349700"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349700\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":349825,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/349700\/revisions\/349825"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=349700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=349700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vibewire.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=349700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}