HH 34 , which we see in the image that accompanies this article, is a Herbig-Haro object located approximately 1,370 light-years away from Earth in the Orion constellation.
“ Herbig-Haro objects are seen to evolve and change significantly over a few years. This particular object, called HH 34, was previously captured by Hubble between 1994 and 2007, and again in glorious detail in 2015,” the Hubble astronomers said.
The area in which this Herbig-Haro object resides is a large star-forming region visible to the naked eye as the Orion Nebula, one of the closest places to Earth for widespread star formation and, as such, has been extensively studied. by astronomers in search of information on how stars and planetary systems are born.
In this case, the energetic outburst of a young star cuts through this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope; this burst of energy is produced by an extremely young star in the earliest phase of formation: in essence , it is a jet of glowing gas traveling at supersonic speeds , and as this energetic jet collides with the material surrounding the star still in formation, it heats the material and makes it shine . Thanks to that, we see these faint, colorful structures, which astronomers refer to as Herbig-Haro objects, waving in the lower left of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image.
The color image of HH 34 was made from separate exposures taken in the infrared region of the spectrum with Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument and combines several observations in four different filters.
“The data in this image comes from a set of Hubble observations to help pave the way for future science with the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope,” the scientists said. ” Webb, which will observe predominantly in infrared wavelengths, will be able to peer into the dusty corners surrounding forming protostars, revolutionizing the study of jets from these young stars,” they conclude.
Reference: NASA / ESA / Hubble / B. Nisini.
