Herbig-Haro (HH) objects are formed when stellar winds or jets of gas spewing from protostars form shock waves colliding with nearby gas and dust at high speeds. Astronomers using the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope have performed near-infrared observations of HH 211, an outflow from an analogue of our Sun when it was at most a few times 10,000 years old.
HH 211, otherwise known as Per-emb 1 and Bolo 103, resides 1,000 light-years away in the constellation of Perseus.
This object contains a Class 0 protostar, an infant solar-type star about 8% the mass of the present-day Sun.
The new high resolution, near-infrared image of HH 211 was obtained with the Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam) aboard the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope.
“Infrared imaging is powerful in studying newborn stars and their outflows, because such stars are invariably still embedded within the gas from the molecular cloud in which they formed,” Webb astronomers said in a statement.
“The infrared emission of the star’s outflows penetrates the obscuring gas and dust, making a Herbig-Haro object like HH 211 ideal for observation with Webb’s sensitive infrared instruments.”
“Molecules excited by the turbulent conditions, including molecular hydrogen, carbon monoxide, and silicon monoxide, emit infrared light that Webb can collect to map out the structure of the outflows.”
The image of HH 211 showcases a series of bow shocks to the southeast (lower-left) and northwest (upper-right) as well as the narrow bipolar jet that powers them.
“Webb reveals this scene in unprecedented detail — roughly 5 to 10 times higher spatial resolution than any previous images of HH 211,” the astronomers said.
“The inner jet is seen to ‘wiggle’ with mirror symmetry on either side of the central protostar.”
“This is in agreement with observations on smaller scales and suggests that the protostar may in fact be an unresolved binary star.”
“Earlier observations of HH 211…
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