When stars are young, they can have a lot of trouble.
Some of them shoot material, gas and dust away from the star. Sometimes a young star will create long and thin jets, like beams from a lighthouse, but more tightly focused.
The Herbig-Haro objects are called Herbig-Haro objects because they can be very long, stabbing out into the dark like light sabers. These jets are not always straight. They show us both beauty and science when they curve.
Mho 2147 is a young star about 10,000 light years away in the constellation of Ophiuchus.
Wow!
The object in this picture is outside the range of color our eyes can see, and was taken using a huge telescope in Chile.
Mho is a mouthful. Cold hydrogen atoms can form H2. When an electron in that molecule jumps down from one energy level to another it emits a wavelength of light in theIR. Astronomers call these narrow wavelength range colors lines.
Some of the objects in the M HO catalog are young stars blowing out the jets. The jet is clearly curved, which makes it very interesting. On one side the jet curves up, and on the other it curves down. This is called an S-curve for obvious reasons, but more technically it is referred to as point symmetry, which means that if you rotation one jet around the point in the center, it has the same curve as the other jet.
What causes that?
The material in the disk surrounding the star is likely to cause the jets. As it falls toward the star, this material gains a lot of energy. The star has a magnetic field as well as the disk. This can lift material out of the disk as it falls in and blast it out away from the star's magnetic poles. The jets are formed by that.
Why are they curved? The star is not the only one. If it has a second star that tugs on the jet-making star, it will wobble. This is the same idea that causes a top to jiggle when it spins on a table top, because of the surface's rubbing against it. Precession is a very common effect in astronomy. The axis of the Moon is precessed every 26,000 years because of its gravity.
Mho 2147 has a star at its center. The astronomer who looked at Mho 2147 estimated it to be a beast, with a mass of more than the Sun. 30 times the Earth-Sun distance is what it is, and it is young, something like 30,000 years old, and has a disk of material around it. Five light years from tip to tip is how long those gorgeous long are. 50 trillion kilometers. This is a large structure.
The astronomer believes it is a trinary star, three stars circling each other, a single star separated from a system about 300 billion km away. The dark cloud blocking the light near the center of the jets is difficult to see in the image. They think the central star is a trinary, but can't say for sure.
There is a faint blue knot of hydrogen gas that is parallel to the main jet and may be from a different star in that system. One of the blue jets is above the main jets, and the other is below them.
The details of the system are not easy to understand. It is possible that the main jets and the ones adjacent are driven by different sources. The fact that they are parallel makes me wonder if it is the same star that blew them out and if the direction of the jets has changed over time. It is strange and not clear what is happening here.
I wonder if the Sun looked like this when it was born. It is not nearly as big as the Herbig-Haro stage, and not all stars go through it. Some stars have complex and energetic childhoods, even if other young stars are around.
I like to think of parallels between human childhood and that of stars. It is fun to think about. It's not to be indelicate, but science is science and it's spewing out of both ends.
I suppose.
All Rights Reserved © 2024
