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.
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. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / B. Nisini.
Herbig-Haro objects were first observed in the 19th century by the American astronomer Sherburne Wesley Burnham, but were not recognized as being a distinct type of emission nebula until the 1940s.
The first astronomers to study them in detail were George Herbig and Guillermo Haro, after whom they have been named.
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.
“Prior to its discovery in 1977 by the American astronomer R. D. Schwartz, the exact mechanism by which these multi-colored objects formed was unknown,” Hubble astronomers said.
“Before 1997 it was theorized by Schwartz and others that the objects could be a type of reflection nebula, or a type of shock wave formed from the gas emitted from a star interacting with the surrounding matter.”
“The mystery was finally solved when a protostar, unseen in this image, was discovered at the center of the long jets of matter,” they added.
“The outflows of matter, some 10 light-years across, were ejected from the newly born star and violently propelled outwards at speeds of over 150 km/s (93 miles/s).”
“Upon reaching the surrounding gas, the collision created the bright shock waves seen here.”
