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HH2:
Shocking Outflow from a Young Star
The image on the left is a
Palomar Digital Sky Survey image of the region of the
Orion Nebula that contains Herbig-Haro objects known as
HH1 and HH2. The inset (right) presents a zoom
that shows the position of the X-ray source (green
circle) detected by Chandra in HH2, superimposed on a
false-color optical image from the Hubble Space
Telescope. Herbig-Haro objects (HH) are clouds of dust
and gas that are either part of high-speed jets of gas
streaming away from very young stars, or clouds of gas
that have been hit by such jets.
The detection of X-rays from HH2 implies that a
600,000 miles per hour jet is plowing into a slower
moving cloud. The resulting shock wave heats gas to a
million degrees Celsius. The young star producing the
jet is heavily obscured and detectable only with
infrared and radio telescopes. In the image on the
left, it lies about halfway between HH2 and HH1, the
small bright cloud above and to the right of HH2.
| Fast Facts for HH2: |
| Credit |
X-ray: NASA/JPL/S. Pravdo et al.
Optical: left: PDSS; right: NASA/HST |
| Scale |
Left panel is 9 arcmin across: Right panel is 50 arcsec across. |
| Category |
Normal Stars & Star Clusters |
| Coordinates (J2000) |
RA 05h 36m 25.06s | Dec -06° 46' 16.00 |
| Constellation |
Orion |
| Observation Dates |
Oct 8, 2000
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| Observation Time |
6 hours |
| Obs. IDs |
21
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| Color Code |
Black-Blue-Red-White is in higher intensity order |
| Instrument |
ACIS |
| Release Date |
October 18, 2001 |
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