Herbig-Haro 24
From
NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day
This might look like a
double-bladed lightsaber, but these two cosmic jets actually beam outward from a newborn
star in a galaxy near you.
Constructed
from Hubble Space Telescope image data, the stunning scene spans about half a
light-year across Herbig-Haro 24 (HH 24), some 1,300 light-years or 400 parsecs away in
the stellar nurseries of
the Orion B molecular cloud complex.
Hidden
from direct view, HH 24's central protostar is surrounded by cold dust and gas
flattened into a rotating accretion
disk.
As
material from the disk falls toward the young stellar object it heats up.
Opposing jets are blasted out along
the system's rotation axis. Cutting through the region's interstellar matter,
the narrow, energetic jets produce a series of glowing shock fronts along
their path.
