Skip to main content

Hubble captures the beautiful ‘tantrums of a baby star’

Herbig-Haro objects are some of the rarer sights in the night sky, taking the form of thin spindly jets of matter floating among the surrounding gas and stars. The two Herbig-Haro objects cataloged as HH46 and HH47, seen in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, were spotted in the constellation of Vela (the Sails), at a distance of over 1,400 light-years from Earth.
Herbig-Haro objects are some of the rarer sights in the night sky, taking the form of thin spindly jets of matter floating among the surrounding gas and stars. The two Herbig-Haro objects cataloged as HH46 and HH47, seen in this image taken with the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope, were spotted in the constellation of Vela (the Sails), at a distance of over 1,400 light-years from Earth. ESA/Hubble & NASA, B. Nisini

This strange-looking sight, captured by the Hubble Space Telescope, is a pair of Herbig-Haro objects. These objects are rarely spotted in such detail, and studying them could give clues to how stars and born and evolve.

Recommended Videos

Each jet of brightness is classified as its own object, with the two seen in this particular image cataloged as HH46 and HH47. They are located in the constellation of Vela (the Sails) and are more than 1,400 light-years away.

The illuminated shapes form when newborn stars throw off jets of ionized gas, which the European Space Agency refers to as the “tantrums of a baby star.” These jets can intersect with nearby clouds of dust and gas at extreme speeds, creating shockwaves that form the objects.

Astronomers observed the first Herbig-Haro object in the 19th century, though at the time they thought it was a type of emission nebula — a cloud of dust and gas that becomes ionized by a nearby hot star. More such objects were discovered, and they were thought to be reflection nebulae, which are cloud of dust and gas which reflect the light from other stars. The objects were eventually given their name after the first two astronomers who studied them in-depth, George Herbig and Guillermo Haro.

It wasn’t until 1977 that the two objects pictured, HH46 and HH47, were discovered, and astronomers finally understood what the objects were. American astronomer R.D. Schwartz first proposed the theory that jets from newborn stars were creating visible shockwaves when they hit clouds of dust.

Studying these objects helps us to learn about how stars form. Astronomers John Bally and Jon Morse write that newborn stars are tempestuous, and throw off a large amount of matter in their first 100,000 years of life. These outflows don’t always form Herbig-Haro objects, but when they do, the objects can reveal information about the speed and motion of these jets.

Georgina Torbet
Georgina has been the space writer at Digital Trends space writer for six years, covering human space exploration, planetary…
Hubble snaps another gorgeous image of the Tarantula Nebula
This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image features a dusty yet sparkling scene from one of the Milky Way’s satellite galaxies, the Large Magellanic Cloud. The Large Magellanic Cloud is a dwarf galaxy situated about 160,000 light-years away in the constellations Dorado and Mensa.

This gorgeous new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a bustling nearby star forming region called the Tarantula Nebula. Given its name due to its complex, web-like internal structure, this nebula is located in a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way called the Large Magellanic Cloud and is often studied by astronomers researching star formation and evolution.

This new image shows the edges of the nebula, further out from its center. In the middle of the nebula are enormous stars that are as much as 200 times the mass of the sun, but here on the outskirts the view is calmer.

Read more
Feast your eyes on 10 years of Hubble images of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune
This is a montage of NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope views of our solar system's four giant outer planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune, each shown in enhanced color. The images were taken over nearly 10 years, from 2014 to 2024.

While the Hubble Space Telescope might be most famous for its images of beautiful and far-off objects like nebulae or distant galaxies, it also takes images of objects closer to home, including the planets right here in our own solar system. For the past 10 years, Hubble has been studying the outer planets in a project called OPAL (Outer Planet Atmospheres Legacy), capturing regular images of each of the four outer planets so scientists can study their changes over time.

The planets Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are different in many ways from Earth, as they are gas giants and ice giants rather than rocky planets. But they do have some similar phenomena, such as weather that regularly changes, including epic events like storms that are so large they can be seen from space. Jupiter's Great Red Spot, for example, the big orange-red eye shape that is visible on most images of the planet, is an enormous storm larger than the width of the entire Earth and which has been raging for centuries.

Read more
Creepy cosmic eyes stare out from space in Webb and Hubble image
The gruesome palette of these galaxies is owed to a mix of mid-infrared light from the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope, and visible and ultraviolet light from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The pair grazed one another millions of years ago. The smaller spiral on the left, catalogued as IC 2163, passed behind NGC 2207, the larger spiral galaxy at right. Both have increased star formation rates. Combined, they are estimated to form the equivalent of two dozen new stars that are the size of the Sun annually. Our Milky Way galaxy forms the equivalent of two or three new Sun-like stars per year. Both galaxies have hosted seven known supernovae, each of which may have cleared space in their arms, rearranging gas and dust that later cooled, and allowed many new stars to form. (Find these areas by looking for the bluest regions).

These sinister eyes gazing out from the depths of space star in a new Halloween-themed image, using data from both the Hubble Space Telescope and the James Webb Space Telescope. It shows a pair of galaxies, IC 2163 on the left and NGC 2207 on the right, which are creeping closer together and interacting to form a creepy-looking face.

The two galaxies aren't colliding directly into one another, as one is passing in front of the other, but they have passed close enough to light scrape by each other and leave indications. If you look closely at the galaxy on the left, you can see how its spiral arms have been pulled out into an elongated shape, likely because of its close pass to the gravity of the other nearby galaxy. The lines of bright red around the "eyes" are created by shock fronts, with material from each galaxy slamming together.

Read more