In a breathtaking new picture of the Hubble Space Telescope, a flashing blue sword looks to pierce a great cosmic heart.
The sword consists of two jets of ionized superheated gas that fly out of opposite poles of a newborn star named IRAS 05491+0247 into space.
According to Hubble team members, the heart is the cloud of the remaining stain and gas which surrounds the protostar.
This spectacular interplay between jets and clouds produces a rare celestial phenomenon known as a Herbig-Haro object, the Space.com website reported.
The image was captured by Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3) sensor, which observes light in both optical and infrared (thermal) wavelengths.
Herbig-Haro objects emit a lot of light at optical wavelengths, but they’re difficult to see since their surroundings absorb a lot of visible light, according to European Space Agency (ESA) officials in a description of the image, which was released today.
The Hubble Space Telescope
The space telescope Hubble is a space-based large telescope. On 24 April 1990, it was launched in orbit by the Discovery space shuttle. Hubble is orbiting approximately 547 kilometers above Earth.
It takes sharp pictures of objects in the sky such as planets, stars, and galaxies.
These pictures capture detailed illustrations of the formation and death of stars and galaxies that are billions of light-years away.
From these photos, scientists learned a great deal about the universe. Many of them are wonderful to look at.
