Hubble Captures Colorful Celestial Cloudscape in the Orion Nebula

The Hubble Captures Space Telescope of NASA/ESA captured the colourful area surrounding the Herbig-Haro object HH 505 in this vivid cosmic cloudscape. Herbig-Haro objects, or the luminous zones that surround young stars, are created when the stellar winds or gas jets that these young stars spit collide violently with the adjacent gas and dust.

In the instance of HH 505, these outflows come from the star IX Ori, which is located around 1000 light-years distant from Earth on the edges of the Orion Nebula.  At the top and bottom of this view, the outflows themselves are evident as beautifully curved structures. Due to their contact with the massive flow of gas and dust from the centre of the Orion Nebula, they are bent into sinuous arcs.

Astronomers researching the characteristics of outflows and protoplanetary discs produced this discovery, which was recorded by Hubble Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS). Bright, new stars are constantly emitting powerful UV radiation into the Orion Nebula. Hubble can clearly see the shockwaves created by the outflows, but this radiation also draws attention to the slower-moving stellar material currents. This enables astronomers to see jets and outflows up close and understand their structures.

The Orion Nebula is the nearest region of major star formation to Earth and is a dynamic expanse of dust and gas where hundreds of stars are forming. As a result, it is one of the celestial regions that is most closely studied, and the Hubble Space Telescope has repeatedly chosen it as a target. This observation was also included in a stunning Hubble mosaic of the Orion Nebula (see above), which combines 520 ACS pictures in five different colours to produce the region’s clearest image ever.