Hubble Telescope Captures Amazing Cosmic Sword Piercing A Star's Heart
The Hubble Telescope recently pictured a peculiarly rare event - a Herbig-Haro event which looks like a cosmic sword piercing through a space heart. Here's how it was caused
A cosmic sword piercing through a heart-like starry cluster has been pictured by the Hubble Space Telescope. The mesmerising sword is made from twin jets of gas which is superheated and ionised. How was the sword created and how was this rare event captured? Read to find out.
What created the sword?
The process was triggered by the birth of a new star from whose poles the laser light-like sword emanates. The baby star, called IRAS 05491+0247 is surrounded by an uncommon phenomenon called "Herbig-Haro object".
The centre of the sword, or the heart where the newly formed star is situated is surrounded by a cloud of leftover gas and dust.
NASA/ESA/Hubble
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Protostars, or very young stars like this one continue to gather mass from its parent molecular cloud for at least 500,000 years before moving on to the next stage of its cosmic existence. The Herbig-Haro object in this photograph taken by Hubble is named HH111 and is situated 1,300 light-years away from Earth in the Orion constellation.
Reuters
How was the Herbig-Haro object captured?
Hubble, the ageing telescope which is slated to retire anytime in the near future took the images using its Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) instrument which can observe space events.
The image, which was released by the European Space Agency on August 30 describes the event as follows - "Herbig-Haro objects actually release a lot of light at optical wavelengths, but they are difficult to observe because their surrounding dust and gas absorb much of the visible light".
Reuters
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Infrared wavelength observations by Hubble are not affected by gas and dust, which is why the Herbig-Haro object was captured so vividly.
The Hubble telescope, a joint mission of NASA and ESA was launched in April 1990. The James Webb Telescope is set to take over the duties of capturing the magic of cosmos from Hubble as the telescope nears what many scientists have called the end of its usefulness. Recently, Hubble suffered a series of serious glitches which prevented the telescope from delivering cosmic secrets to us for a whole month.
What do you think about this amazing space picture? Let us know in the comments below, and keep visiting Indiatimes.com for your latest science, space and technology fix.
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