Hubble captures massive protostar jet HH 80/81 in Sagittarius

NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a jet of gas from a forming star producing bright pink and green patches identified as the Herbig-Haro pair HH 80/81, located about 5,500 light-years away in the Sagittarius constellation.

The patches running diagonally through the image are HH 80/81, with the upper-left patch part of HH 81 and the lower streak part of HH 80. Herbig-Haro objects appear when jets of ionized gas ejected by a newly forming star collide with slower, previously ejected outflows, producing glowing shocked gas.

HH 80/81’s outflow stretches over 32 light-years, making it the largest protostellar outflow known, and the pair are described as the brightest HH objects known. The source powering them is the protostar IRAS 18162-2048, roughly 20 times the mass of the Sun and the most massive protostar in the L291 molecular cloud. Astronomers measured parts of HH 80/81 moving at over 1,000 km/s, the fastest recorded outflow in both radio and visual wavelengths from a young stellar object, and noted that this is the only HH jet found to be driven by a young, very massive star rather than a low-mass star.

Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3 provided the sensitivity and resolution needed to study fine details, movements, and structural changes in HH 80/81; the pair were previously observed by Hubble in 1995, and the new data allowed astronomers to measure their speeds and examine their structure.

Key Topics

Science, Sagittarius, Herbig-haro Object, Hubble Space Telescope