The Orion Nebula is the region where young stars are formed. The Hubble Space Telescope recently spotted this famous object in the Milky Way.
The structure is 24 light-years long and can be seen even with the naked eye thanks to its size and relatively short distance from Earth. At a distance of about 1,300 light-years from our planet, the Orion Nebula is the ideal place for observations that can explain the conditions under which star formation occurs.
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A new image of it, taken by the Hubble Space Telescope for astronomy, may bring back visions of dreams. And although delicate clouds in pastel colors seem to be painted with a paintbrush, in fact, very active processes occur inside them. It has given rise to young stars, one of which is IX Ori.
These types of objects are created when a dense knot in a molecular cloud, like a stellar nursery in Orion, collapses under its own mass. As it rotates, it takes material from the surrounding cloud that allows the young star to evolve. When matter begins to sink into them, high-energy plasma jets can be fired from the star’s poles. Some of this material is directed along the lines of the star’s external magnetic field to the poles. These magnetic field lines act as a particle accelerator, so when matter reaches the poles, it is released at tremendous speed.
The Orion Nebula is more than 1,300 light-years away from Earth
There is also a so-called Herbig-Haro body that forms when accelerated jets collide with surrounding gas. As a result, it heats up and acquires great brightness. Then the young star seems to have two large, high-brightness “rods”. Because these events occur with a tremendous frequency, astronomers are trying to better understand them to understand how young stars excrete material from their surrounding cloud.
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The gas and dust supply is cut off, so the star cannot evolve further, which in turn affects its final dimensions. These, of course, are very important in the context of their classification and possible future. For example, stars that aren’t massive enough won’t be able to become black holes, so they’ll even die as white dwarfs.
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