Hubble takes a close look at a colorful cosmic fog background

Aug. 12 () –

This celestial cloudscape from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope captures the colorful region of the Orion Nebula surrounding the Herbig-Haro object HH ​​505.

Herbig-Haro objects are luminous regions surrounding newborn stars which form when stellar winds or gas jets blow out from these infant stars creating shock waves that collide with nearby gas and dust at high speeds, reports NASA.

In the case of HH 505, these flows originate from the star IX Ori, which is located on the outskirts of the Orion Nebula, about 1,000 light-years from Earth. The output streams themselves are visible as gracefully curved structures at the top and bottom of this image. Their interaction with the large-scale flow of gas and dust from the nebula’s core distorts them into sinuous curves.

Captured with Hubble’s Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) by astronomers studying the properties of outflows and protoplanetary disks, the image reveals bright shock waves formed by the outflows, as well as slower-moving streams of stellar material.

The Orion Nebula is awash in intense ultraviolet radiation from bright young stars. Hubble’s sensitivity to ultraviolet light allows astronomers directly observe these high-energy flows and learn more about their structures.

The Orion Nebula is a dynamic region of dust and gas where thousands of stars are forming. It is the closest massive star-forming region to Earth, making it one of the most closely examined areas of the night sky and often a target for Hubble. This observation was also part of a fascinating Hubble mosaic of the Orion Nebula, which combined 520 ACS images in five different colors to create the sharpest view ever taken of the region.