Wild Star Shoots Out Glowing Jet

The young and wild star HL Tau seen in this Hubble image and just 460 light-years away from us, is blowing out a bright jet of glowing material trailed by an intricate, orange-hued plume of gas and dust. This kind of phenomenon, which is actually very common in star-forming regions, is one of the most dynamic in cosmos since the jets develop, change and disappear within a span of just years.

It evolves when during the first few hundred thousand years of their existence, new stars like our HL Tau here pull in material that falls towards them from the surrounding space. This material forms a hot disc that swirls around the coalescing body, launching narrow streams of material from its poles. These jets are shot out at speeds of several hundred kilometers (or miles) per second and collide violently with nearby clumps of dust and gas, creating wispy, billowing structures known as Herbig-Haro objects -- like the jet called HH 151 seen in this observation made by the Hubble space telescope.

Objects like this one, located in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), quickly race away from the newly-forming star that emitted them, colliding with new clumps of material and glowing brightly before fading away.