© ESA/Hubble & NASANewborn star’s
smoking gun
This image reveals more spoils
from the NASA/ESA Hubble
Space Telescope: the smoking
gun of a baby star – Herbig-Haro
objects, which are numbered
seven through to 11 (HH 7-11) and
appear as five points of light,
visible in blue in the top centre of
the image. These objects belong
to NGC 1333, a reflection nebula
packed with gas and dust about
a thousand light years away from
Earth. Herbig-Haro objects are
made when jets of ionised gas
ejected by a young star collide
with nearby clouds of gas and
dust at high speeds.
Herbig-Haro objects are known
to astronomers as transient
phenomena. Speeding away
from the star that made them
at 250,000 kilometres (155,
miles) per hour, they vanish into
nothing within a few tens of
thousands of years. The stellar
youngster that’s the source of HH
7-11 is known as SVS 13 - all five
objects are rushing away from it
towards the upper left.