There are stars that look like glowing red giants, and then this galactic explosion captured by Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3. This young stellar object is located more than 9,000 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, called IRAS 05506+2414, and believed to be an explosive event caused by the disruption of a massive young star system.
Typically, the swirling discs of material that you see surrounding a young star are funneled back into twin outflows of gas and dust from the star. However, for IRAS 05506+2414, it appears as a fan-like spray of material traveling at velocities of up to 350 kilometers per second and spreading outwards from the center. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 was used by astronomers to measure the distance to IRAS 05506+2414.
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While it is possible to measure the velocity of material speeding outwards from the star, astronomers cannot tell how far from Earth the star actually is from a single observation. However, by measuring the distance that the outflow travels between successive images, they will be able to infer the distance to IRAS 05506+2414,” said the ESA.
