A brand new image captures a winding jet of fabric that appears like a garden sprinkler expelled by a young stellar object.
The stellar object, formally referred to as 244-440, resides within the Orion Nebula, a stellar nursery that lies about 1,350 light-years from Earth. Taken using the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) instrument on the European Southern Observatory’s (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in northern Chile, the photo captures the striking “S” shape of the jet of matter.
The curved nature of the jet suggests it could be coming from one star orbiting one other star, in accordance with an ESO statement (opens in recent tab).
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“Very young stars are sometimes surrounded by disks of fabric falling towards the star. A few of this material may be expelled into powerful jets perpendicularly to the disk,” ESO officials wrote within the statement. “The S-shaped jet of 244-440 suggests that what lurks at the middle of this object isn’t one but two stars orbiting one another. This orbital motion periodically changes the orientation of the jet, just like a water sprinkler.”
One other possible explanation is that the radiation from other stars within the Orion cloud — an especially lively star-forming region — could alter the form of the jet, creating the S-shaped stream of matter observed, in accordance with the statement.
The MUSE instrument was used to map the distribution of iron, nitrogen and oxygen across the young star, which is the red, green and blue coloured gas captured within the photo. MUSE captures data at different wavelengths, or colours, concurrently, allowing astronomers to map the composition of the gas and the way it moves.
MUSE is installed on the VLT’s Unit Telescope 4, which is provided with advanced adaptive optics technology that corrects for the blurring effect of Earth’s atmosphere that may otherwise distort images of astronomical objects.
This technology enables MUSE to deliver images even sharper than those captured by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The truth is, the brand new photo of 244-440, which ESO shared on April 17, is the sharpest image ever taken of this stellar object, offering priceless insight on how stars are born in massive clouds like Orion, ESO officials said within the statement.
The recent observations have been accepted for publication (opens in recent tab) within the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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