Credit: X-ray: NASA/JPL/S. Pravdo et al. Optical: left: PDSS; right: NASA/HST

On the left is a Palomar optical image of a region of the Orion Nebula that contains two Herbig-Haro objects known as HH1 and HH2. These objects are either part of high-speed jets of gas streaming away from very young stars, or clouds of gas that have been hit by such jets. The blowup on the right is a Hubble image of HH2, with the green circle indicating the position of an X-ray source detected by Chandra. The detection of X-rays from HH2 implies that a 600,000 miles per hour jet is plowing into a slower moving cloud and heating the gas to a million degrees Celsius. The young star producing the jet is heavily obscured and cannot be seen optically.

Provider: Chandra X-ray Observatory

Image Source: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/2001/hh2/

Curator: Chandra X-ray Observatory, Cambridge, MA, USA

Image Use Policy: http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/image_use.html