Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgement: Judy Schmidt

Surrounded by an envelope of dust, the subject of this NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image is a young pre-main-sequence star known as HBC 1. The star is in an immature and adolescent phase of life, hence its classification most of a Sun-like stars life is spent in a stage comparable to human adulthood dubbed the main sequence. In this view, HBC 1 illuminates a wispy reflection nebula known as IRAS 00044+6521. Formed from clouds of interstellar dust, reflection nebulae do not emit any visible light of their own and instead like fog encompassing a lamppost shine via the light from the stars embedded within. Though nearby stars cannot ionise the nebulas non-gaseous contents, as with brighter emission nebulae, scattered starlight can make the dust visible. What makes this seemingly ordinary reflection nebula more interesting are three nearby HerbigHaro objects known as HH 943, HH 943B and HH 943A which are not visible in this image located within IRAS 00044+6521 itself. HerbigHaro objects are small patches of dust, hydrogen, helium and other gases that form when narrow jets of gas ejected by young stars such as HBC 1 collide with clouds of gas and dust. Lasting just a few thousand years, these objects rapidly move away from their parent star before dissipating into space.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1607a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License