Glowing Worm

J. Morse/STScI, and NASA

A three tril­lion mile-long jet called HH-47 resem­bles a glow­ing worm in this NASA Hub­ble Space Tele­scope image. Jets are com­mon around newly formed stars. They are the exhaust prod­uct of the chaotic for­ma­tion of the star.

Explore the image. Fol­low the red flow of the jet into the knots and eddys. The com­pli­cated jet pat­tern com­ing from the star at the left may mean the star is wob­bling. The grav­i­ta­tional pull of a com­pan­ion star is one pos­si­ble cul­prit for the wob­ble. HH-47 sits at the edge of the Gum Neb­ula, pos­si­bly a part of the Vela super­nova rem­nant. The jet has bur­rowed a hole through the dense cloud of the neb­ula. The fast mov­ing jet slams into the qui­eter neb­ula. The shock waves com­press gas and dust and cause the atoms within the neb­ula to glow.

The HH of this object stands for Herbig-Haro. Herbig-Haro objects are bright patches of neb­u­los­ity that appear to be mov­ing away from newly formed proto-stars. HH-47 lies about 1,500 light-years from Earth toward the south­ern con­stel­la­tions of Vela, the Sails, and Pup­pis, the poop deck. These con­stel­la­tions his­tor­i­cally were part of a huge con­stel­la­tion rep­re­sent­ing the Argo Navis, the ship of Jason and the Argonauts.