This photograph, made with the Wide Field/Planetary Camera on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope, reveals the detailed structure of a newly discovered jet of material streaming away from a young star in the Orion Nebula.
While similar jets have been seen from the ground, the new observations reveal the structure of this jet with unprecedented clarity. Of particular significance is the fact that the jet is bright along its edges in the light of gaseous sulfur atoms (shown here in red). Experts believe this structure to be due to shock fronts at the boundary between the jet and the surrounding gas of the Orion Nebula. Astronomers say that jets such as this are of interest because they provide clues about how stars form and how young stars affect their environment.
The field shown is only a very small portion of the "Great Nebula" in Orion, which is a tremendous "stellar nursery" about 7 light years in size and located approximately 1,500 light-years from the Earth. The nebula glows in a number of distinct colors, each due to atoms of a different chemical element. In the picture, emission from ionised sulfur items are shown in red, light from ionized oxygen atoms is shown in blue, and light from hydrogen atoms is shown in green.
The Orion Nebula glows because of the intense ultraviolet light from a cluster of hot young stars within it. The detailed structural information in these images, which show features that are smaller than our solar system (about 6 light hours across), is possible thanks to the high spatial resolution (sharpness) of images obtained with the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers say that despite the spherical aberration of the telescope's main mirror, about 15% of the light from an object is still focussed into a very tight image, and that allows the small scale structure of objects to be seen better than in ground based images which are blurred by the earth's atmosphere.
The images shown here have been computer processed to partially correct for the effect of the mirror's flaw. The Wide Field/Planetary Camera was designed and built by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is operated by the California Institute of Technology.
Credits
NASA, ESA, and STScI| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | Orion Nebula, M42, NGC 1976 |
| R.A. Position | 05h 35m 17.29s |
| Dec. Position | -5° 23' 27.99" |
| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | A name or catalog number that astronomers use to identify an astronomical object. |
| Object Description | The type of astronomical object. |
| R.A. Position | Right ascension – analogous to longitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Dec. Position | Declination – analogous to latitude – is one component of an object's position. |
| Constellation | One of 88 recognized regions of the celestial sphere in which the object appears. |
| Distance | The physical distance from Earth to the astronomical object. Distances within our solar system are usually measured in Astronomical Units (AU). Distances between stars are usually measured in light-years. Interstellar distances can also be measured in parsecs. |
| Dimensions | The physical size of the object or the apparent angle it subtends on the sky. |
| About The Data | |
| Data Description |
|
| Instrument | The science instrument used to produce the data. |
| Exposure Dates | The date(s) that the telescope made its observations and the total exposure time. |
| Filters | The camera filters that were used in the science observations. |
| About The Image | |
| Image Credit | The primary individuals and institutions responsible for the content. |
| Publication Date | The date and time the release content became public. |
| Color Info | A brief description of the methods used to convert telescope data into the color image being presented. |
| Orientation | The rotation of the image on the sky with respect to the north pole of the celestial sphere. |
