HH 24

In this Hubble Space Telescope image, an infant star awakens by blasting twin jets of material into space as a sort of birth announcement to the universe.

The developing star resides in a turbulent birthing ground for new stars known as the Orion B molecular cloud complex, located 1,350 light-years away, in our Milky Way galaxy. The star and its jets are called Herbig-Haro 24 (HH 24).

The star cannot be seen in the image because it is surrounded by dust. This material is left over from the gravitational collapse of the giant gas cloud that formed the star. Hubble observed HH24 in near-infrared light, which penetrates some of the material cocooning the newly forming star and captures a view of the jets.

Image produced from raw data downloaded from MAST: the Barbara A. Mikulski Archive for Space Telescopes

Original image by ESA/Hubble, alignment, integration and colour mapping by Arc Fortnight.