Kull Wahad!

Hubble Sees the Force Awakening in a Newborn Star

Just in time for “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens,” NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured what looks like a cosmic lightsaber.

It’s a newborn star that shoots twin jets out into space. It lies inside the Orion B molecular cloud complex, located 1,350 light-years away in the Milky Way. Some really interesting filaments and structures can be seen in this vast star-forming region heated by radiation from newborn stars.

One of them is a Herbig-Haro (HH) object: a clump of nebulosity formed when narrow jets of gas ejected by young stars collide with clouds of gas and dust nearby at super high speeds. The prominent HH object shown in this image is HH 24 (upper left).

These young stellar jets are ideal targets for upcoming James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in October 2018, which will have even greater infrared wavelength vision to see deeper into the dust surrounding newly forming stars.