Space Slug

Credit: NASA/ESA and Jeff Hes­ter (Ari­zona State University)

Some­times when we look closer at images we see even more shapes. In the image of the Tri­fid Neb­ula we find a giant space slug. It’s right at the edge of the frame and easy to miss.

The Tri­fid Neb­ula, also called M20, is one of the most well-known star birth regions in our night sky. The star birth is intense. Strong winds from the new stars are shap­ing and tear­ing the cloud apart. In this image from NASA’s Hub­ble Space Tele­scope, we see part of a dense cloud of gas and dust. The cloud is being lit from a star that we can­not see in the image. The star is about eight light-years away. Radi­a­tion from that star is caus­ing the whole neb­ula to glow.

The anten­nae of the slug is called a “stel­lar jet” and extends almost a light year from the rest of the cloud. This jet hides a young star and is the exhaust from new star for­ma­tion. This jet pro­vides the young star mate­r­ial to grow but even­tu­ally the winds from the more pow­er­ful star above will rob the young star of mate­r­ial. In about 10,000 years, the star will stop grow­ing. Also shown in the image is another stalk. It is an exam­ple of what astronomers call “evap­o­rat­ing gaseous glob­ules” or “EGGs.”

The Tri­fid Neb­ula is located about 9,000 light-years from Earth toward the con­stel­la­tion of Sagit­tar­ius, the archer.