NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope recently observed a Herbig-Haro object, HH 211, located approximately 1,000 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. This object was found to be one of the youngest and nearest protostellar outflows from a Class 0 protostar, a young analog of our Sun when it was just a few tens of thousands of years old.
Herbig-Haro objects are essentially luminous regions that surround infantile stars, formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spew from these newborn stars due to shock waves colliding with nearby gas as well as dust at high speeds. What you see in the image above is a series of bow shocks to the southeast and the narrow bipolar jet powering them.
- Feed a passion for science and technology – Kids can learn more about the challenges of space exploration with this LEGO Technic NASA Mars Rover...
- Conduct a test flight – This advanced building kit for kids ages 10 and up includes a buildable toy version of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, which...
- AR brings the mission to life – The accompanying augmented reality app experience lets kids dive into the details of the rover and its mission
The team measured the velocities of the innermost outflow structures to be roughly 48-60 miles per second (80 to 100 kilometers per second). However, the difference in velocity between these sections of the outflow and the leading material they’re colliding with — the shock wave — is much smaller. The researchers concluded that outflows from the youngest stars, like that in the center of HH 211, are mostly made up of molecules, because the comparatively low shock wave velocities are not energetic enough to break the molecules apart into simpler atoms and ions,” said NASA.
