Telescope Captures Stunning Image of Newborn Star and Vivid Stream (Video)

Astronomers have gotten a closer look at a newborn star with the help of the Atacama Large Milllimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). They've spotted a vivid stream of material hurtling away from the star, discovering a little bit more about the powerful jets ejecting from an object known as Herbig-Haro 46/47.

Young stars are violent when they first form. They can eject material at speeds as high as one million kilometers per hour which can then crash into surrounding gas. This massive collision causes the gas to glow and, in the case of the young star that ALMA spotted, creates a Herbig-Haro object.

This particular Herbig-Haro object is located about 1,400 light-years from Earth in the southern constellation of Vela. There, the object spews two powerful jets; one points toward our planet while the other moves away. Although researchers have seen these jets before, they had no idea that they were moving so quickly. It turns out that, in fact, the outflowing gas carries much more energy and momentum than previously thought.

"ALMA's exquisite sensitivity allows the detection of previously unseen features in this source, like this very fast outflow," said Hector Arce, one of the researchers, in a news release. "It also seems to be a textbook example of a simple model where the molecular outflow is generated by a wide-angle wind from the young star."

The system is similar to most isolated low mass stars during their formation and birth. However, it does possess some more unusual attributes. The outflow impacts the cloud directly on one side of the star and escapes out of the cloud on the other. This makes it the perfect example to study the impact of stellar winds on the parent cloud.

That's not all the astronomers found, though. They also discovered an outflow component that seems to be coming from a lower mass companion to the young star. This secondary outflow is almost at a right angle to the principle object and seems to be carving its own hole out of the surrounding cloud.

The findings are exciting for the astronomers. Not only do they reveal a bit more about this stellar object, but they also show the capabilities of ALMA. In the future, scientists plan to continue studying star formation with the use of this instrument.

The study is published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Want to get a closer look at Herbig-Haro 46/47? Check out the video below, courtesy of ESO.