Telescope Daily: A very hot jet 1,000 light years from Earth

Welcome to the Daily Telescope. There is too little darkness in this world and not enough light, too little pseudoscience and not enough science. We’ll let another post provide your daily horoscope. At Ars Technica, we will take a different route, finding inspiration from vivid images of the universe full of stars and wonders.

Good morning. It was December 6, and today’s image shows a stunning explosion from a double star about 1,000 light years from Earth.

The James Webb Space Telescope captured this image and provides unprecedented details of Herbig-Harrow Object 797. The object is a bright region around a newborn star and forms when stellar winds or jets of gas emitted by this protostar form a shock wave which collides with nearby gas. and dust at high speed.

In this case – previously unknown to astronomers – the source of this amazing glow is not one but two stars, which can be seen on the right side of the image. Other outflows are also visible in this image, including one of the protostars at the top of the image, with its glowing hollow walls.

These objects are in the wheelhouse of the Webb Telescope’s infrared capabilities. Molecules in the outflow of young stars are excited by turbulent conditions, and emit infrared light that Webb can collect to visualize the structure of the outflow. These molecules are heated to temperatures of thousands of degrees Celsius due to shocks.

Space is pretty good if you ask me.

source: ESA/WEP, NASA and CSA, T. Ray (Dublin Institute for Advanced Study)

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