Violent birth announcement from an infant star

Esahubble_potw1421a_1024

esahubble_potw1421a May 26th, 2014

Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgements: R. Sahai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Serge Meunier

This new Hubble image shows IRAS 14568-6304, a young star that is cloaked in a haze of golden gas and dust. It appears to be embedded within an intriguing swoosh of dark sky, which curves through the image and obscures the sky behind. This dark region is known as the Circinus molecular cloud. This cloud has a mass around 250 000 times that of the Sun, and it is filled with gas, dust and young stars. Within this cloud lie two prominent and enormous regions known colloquially to astronomers as Circinus-West and Circinus-East. Each of these clumps has a mass of around 5000 times that of the Sun, making them the most prominent star-forming sites in the Circinus cloud. The clumps are associated with a number of young stellar objects, and IRAS 14568-6304, featured here under a blurry fog of gas within Circinus-West, is one of them. IRAS 14568-6304 is special because it is driving a protostellar jet, which appears here as the "tail" below the star. This jet is the leftover gas and dust that the star took from its parent cloud in order to form. While most of this material forms the star and its accretion disc the disc of material surrounding the star, which may one day form planets at some point in the formation process the star began to eject some of the material at supersonic speeds through space. This phenomenon is not only beautiful, but can also provide us with valuable clues about the process of star formation. IRAS 14568-6304 is one of several outflow sources in the Circinus-West clump. Together, these sources make up one of the brightest, most massive, and most energetic outflows ever reported. Scientists have even suggested calling Circinus-West the "nest of molecular outflows" in tribute to this activity. A version of this image was entered into the Hubble's Hidden Treasures image processing competition by contestant Serge Meunier.

Provider: Hubble Space Telescope | ESA

Image Source: https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1421a/

Curator: ESA/Hubble, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Image Details

Image Type
Observation
Object Name
Circinus IRAS 14568-6304
Subject - Milky Way
Star > Evolutionary Stage > Young Stellar Object
Nebula > Appearance > Dark > Molecular Cloud
Esahubble_potw1421a_128
 

Position Details

Position (ICRS)
RA = 15h 0m 58.5s
DEC = -63° 16’ 53.2”
Orientation
North is 94.8° CCW
Field of View
3.3 x 1.5 arcminutes
Constellation
Circinus

Color Mapping

  Telescope Spectral Band Wavelength
Orange Hubble (ACS) Infrared (I) 814.0 nm
Cyan Hubble (ACS) Optical (V) 606.0 nm
Spectrum_base
Orange
Cyan
Esahubble_potw1421a_1280
×
ID
potw1421a
Subject Category
B.3.1.2   B.4.2.3.1  
Subject Name
Circinus, IRAS 14568-6304
Credits
ESA/Hubble & NASA Acknowledgements: R. Sahai (Jet Propulsion Laboratory), Serge Meunier
Release Date
2014-05-26T10:00:00
Lightyears
Redshift
Reference Url
https://www.spacetelescope.org/images/potw1421a/
Type
Observation
Image Quality
Distance Notes
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1104.2869v1.pdf
Facility
Hubble Space Telescope, Hubble Space Telescope
Instrument
ACS, ACS
Color Assignment
Orange, Cyan
Band
Infrared, Optical
Bandpass
I, V
Central Wavelength
814, 606
Start Time
Integration Time
Dataset ID
Notes
Coordinate Frame
ICRS
Equinox
J2000
Reference Value
225.243669019, -63.281439296
Reference Dimension
3951.0, 1820.0
Reference Pixel
1975.0, 910.0
Scale
-1.39757846998e-05, 1.39757846998e-05
Rotation
94.799999999999912
Coordinate System Projection:
TAN
Quality
Full
FITS Header
Notes
Creator (Curator)
ESA/Hubble
URL
http://www.spacetelescope.org/
Name
Email
Telephone
Address
Karl-Schwarzschild-Strasse 2
City
Garching bei München
State/Province
Postal Code
D-85748
Country
Germany
Rights
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
Publisher
ESA/Hubble
Publisher ID
esahubble
Resource ID
potw1421a
Metadata Date
2013-09-17T09:07:10+02:00
Metadata Version
1.1
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Detailed color mapping information coming soon...

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There is no distance meta data in this image.

 

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