Hubble Unveils an Astronomical Explosion
Text credit: European Space Agency
Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, R. Sahai
A shroud of thick gas and dust surrounds a bright young star in this image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 inspected a young stellar object, over 9,000 light-years away in the constellation Taurus, to help astronomers understand the earliest stages in the lives of massive stars. This object – which is known to astronomers as IRAS 05506+2414 – may be an example of an explosive event caused by the disruption of a massive young star system.
The swirling discs of material surrounding a young star are usually funneled into twin outflows of gas and dust from the star. In the case of IRAS 05506+2414, however, a fan-like spray of material traveling at velocities of up to 217 miles per second (350 km per second) is spreading outwards from the center of this image.
Astronomers turned to Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 to measure the distance to IRAS 05506+2414. While it is possible to measure the velocity of material speeding outward from the star, astronomers cannot tell how far from Earth the star actually is from a single observation. To determine the star’s distance, they measured how far the outflow travels between successive images. From there they could infer the distance to IRAS 05506+2414. Knowing its distance allows astronomers to determine how bright the star is and how much energy it is emitting, and therefore estimate its mass – all vital information in determining the origin of this bright young star’s unusual outflow.
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