Deep Space Drama

Credit: NASA, ESA and The Hub­ble Her­itage Team (AURA/STScI).

Drama plays out in deep space as a small fish swims from the jaws of a larger creature.

Herbig-Haro 32 formed when the young cen­tral stars ejected jets of mate­r­ial out into space. Most of the dust in this NASA Hub­ble Space Tele­scope image has been cleared away but some gas is attracted to the cen­tral stars by grav­ity. This mate­r­ial slowly spi­rals into the star. Most of the mate­r­ial will accrete onto the star adding to the mass. The rest of the mate­r­ial is ejected at the poles of the star to form two jets, one point­ing over the top of the star and another point­ing down. These jets plow into quiet sur­round­ing neb­ula at high speed caus­ing the gas to glow. This glow is called a Herbig-Haro object. Astronomers George Her­big and Guillermo Haro stud­ied and described these objects in the 1950s.

Explore the image and find the two green­ish jets. Imag­ine the top jet is tilted slightly toward Earth. It is brighter and larger. The small jet at the bot­tom is located on the far side of the cen­tral star. Gas and dust between the jet and Earth block the light and make it slightly red­der and dimmer.

HH 32 is located about 1,000 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion of Aquila, the Eagle. Aquila is a bright sum­mer con­stel­la­tion in the north­ern hemi­sphere. The con­stel­la­tion is ancient, being one of the 48 con­stel­la­tions described by Ptolemy in the 2nd century.