Young Star, Dark Cloud
High-speed outflows of molecular gas from a young stellar object
glow in infrared light, revealing themselves in this recent
false-color
image from the Spitzer Space Telescope.
Cataloged as
HH (Herbig-Haro) 46/47 the
infrared source is
lodged within a dark nebula or Bok globule - near the lower right
corner of the dark nebula in the optical inset -
that is largely opaque
when viewed in visible light.
The energetic outflow
features extend for nearly a light-year,
burrowing into the dark interstellar material, and
are
attributed to early stages in the life of a sun-like star.
They may well represent a phase of our own
Sun's evolution
which took place some 4.5 billion years ago, along with
the formation of our solar system from a
circumstellar disk.
A tantalizing
object to explore with
Spitzer's infrared
capabilities, this
young star
system is relatively nearby,
located only some 1,140 light-years distant in the nautical
constellation
Vela.