Credit: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/M. McClure et al.

This image shows jets of silicon monoxide (SiO) blowing away from the baby star HOPS-315. The image was obtained with the with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. The blue jet is moving towards us, and the red one is moving away. Observations taken with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) show signatures of SiO moving at about 10 km/s. The SiO jets seen in this ALMA image move about 10 times faster though. This means that the slow-moving SiO must be located in a small area around the star, about the size of the asteroid belt around our Sun, too small to be seen in this image. Also, the abundance of gaseous SiO measured in the jet seen with ALMA is lower than expected. Since the composition of the jet should be similar to that of the disc from where the jet emerges, this means that some of the gaseous SiO in the disc is condensing into solid material.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso2512c/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, None, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License