Credit: ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/G. Blázquez-Calero, M. Osorio, G. Anglada. Background image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA/Karl Stapelfeldt.

We know that a star’s childhood is turbulent: growing via a disc of gas and dust, the same disc from which planets form. Young stars also experience outbursts, expelling material via fast jets that regulate how much material is left to feed the young stars and form planets around it. Today’s Picture of the Week shows one of those jets interacting with the surrounding material.  The background image, taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, shows the young star SVS 13, located in the star-forming region NGC 1333 about 1000 light-years away. This star is expelling gas in the form of clumps known as “molecular bullets”. The insets show observations of one of those “bullets” taken with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), in which ESO is a partner. Each frame displays gas moving at different speeds, ranging from 35 km/s (red) to 97 km/s (blue). This series of images is similar to a medical tomography, and allows astronomers to reconstruct the 3D shape of the rings and shells of gas that the jet creates as it interacts with its environment. “This is the first time such a degree of fine detail has been reached, thanks to the exquisite sensitivity achieved in our study with ALMA,” said Guillermo Blazquez-Calero, lead author of the study recently published in Nature Astronomy. This will help astronomers understand the not-so-peaceful infancy of stars and how planets form around them.  Link  Research paper in Nature Astronomy 

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/potw2550a/

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

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License