A NASA Hubble Space Telescope image of a huge, complex cloud of gas heated by shock waves from jets of gas produced by the birth of a new star. Called Herbig-Haro object #2 (HH- 2) the cloud is a visible manifestation of physical processes that occur early in the evolution of a star. The photograph was produced from three images obtained with the Wide Field/Planetary Camera (WFIPC). Exposures were taken through different filters to examine light emitted by HH-2 in emission lines of ionized oxygen (coded blue), hydrogen (coded green), and sulfur (coded red). The blue spots represent the highest temperature gas. The red regions identify cooler gas. In the brightest portions of the object, emissions from all three components combine to produce white features. The image is approximately 11 arc seconds on a side, corresponds to a size of about 480 billion miles (772 billion kilometers) at the object's distance of 1,500 light-years). The smallest features resolved in the image are about 3 billion miles (4.8 billion kilometers) in diameter, comparable to the distance from Earth to the planet Neptune in our Solar System.
Credits
Credit: Richard Schwartz (Univ. of Missouri, St. Louis), Martin Cohen (Univ. of California, Berkeley), Burton Jones (Univ. of California, Santa Cruz), Karl-Heinz Bohm (Univ. of Washington), John Raymond and Lee Hartmann (HarvardSmithsonian Center for Astrophysics), Reinhard Mundt (Max-Planck-lnstitut fur Astronomle), Michael Dopita (Mt. Stromlo and Siding Spring Observatories), and Angie Schultz (Washington Univ. at St. Louis/Univ. of Missouri at St. Louis).| About The Object | |
|---|---|
| Object Name | HH-2 |
| R.A. Position | 05h 36m 24.0s |
| Dec. Position | -6° 46' 59.99" |
| 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. |
