Latest Bipolar outflow Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers have discovered four pairs of stars that orbit each other in less than four hours, according to findings published in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Using the United Kingdom Infrared Telescope (UKIRT) in Hawaii, astronomers observed something scientists thought couldn't exist. It was always thought that if binary stars form too close to each other, they would end up merging into one...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The Hubble Space Telescope has unleashed a new image of a geyser of hot gas flowing from a newborn star. In the new image, Herbig-Haro 110 is seen showing off a turbulent streamer of gas, streaking across the picture. "Resembling a Fourth of July skyrocket, Herbig-Haro 110 is a geyser of hot gas from a newborn star that splashes up against and ricochets from the dense core of a cloud of molecular hydrogen," NASA said....

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope took this image of a baby star sprouting two identical jets (green lines emanating from fuzzy star). The jet on the right had been seen before in visible-light views, but the jet at left -- the identical twin to the first jet -- could only be seen in detail with Spitzer's infrared detectors. The left jet was hidden behind a dark cloud, which Spitzer can see through. The twin jets, in a system called Herbig-Haro 34, are made of identical knots of gas and dust,...

  Astronomers have combined two decades of Hubble observations to make unprecedented movies revealing never-before-seen details of the birth pangs of new stars. This sheds new light on how stars like the Sun form. Stars aren’t shy about sending out birth announcements. They fire off energetic jets of glowing gas travelling at supersonic speeds in opposite directions through space. Although astronomers have looked at still pictures of stellar jets for decades, now they can watch...

Astronomers have discovered that two symmetrical jets shooting away from opposite sides of a blossoming star are experiencing a time delay: knots of gas and dust from one jet blast off four-and-a-half years later than identical knots from the other jet.The finding, which required the infrared vision of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, is helping astronomers understand how jets are produced around forming stars, including those resembling our sun when it was young."More studies are needed...

Astronomers have uncovered strong evidence that brown dwarfs form like stars. Using the Smithsonian's Submillimeter Array (SMA), they detected molecules of carbon monoxide shooting outward from the object known as ISO-Oph 102. Such molecular outflows typically are seen coming from young stars or protostars. However, this object has an estimated mass of 60 Jupiters, meaning it is too small to be a star. Astronomers have classified it as a brown dwarf.Brown dwarfs are on the dividing line...

University of Arizona astronomers who are probing the oxygen-rich environment around a supergiant star with one of the world's most sensitive radio telescopes have discovered a score of molecules that include compounds needed for life."I don't think anyone would have predicted that VY Canis Majoris is a molecular factory. It was really unexpected," said Arizona Radio Observatory (ARO) Director Lucy Ziurys, UA professor of astronomy and of chemistry. "Everyone thought that the...

VLT Finds Smallest Galactic Object with JetsJets of matter have been discovered around a very low mass 'failed star', mimicking a process seen in young stars. This suggests that these 'brown dwarfs' form in a similar manner to normal stars but also that outflows are driven out by objects as massive as hundreds of millions of solar masses down to Jupiter-sized objects.The brown dwarf with the name 2MASS1207-3932 is full of surprises Its companion, a 5 Jupiter-mass giant, was the first...

NASA -- The Hubble Space Telescope has "caught" the Boomerang Nebula in these new images taken with the Advanced Camera for Surveys. This reflecting cloud of dust and gas has two nearly symmetric lobes (or cones) of matter that are being ejected from a central star. Over the last 1,500 years, nearly one and a half times the mass of our Sun has been lost by the central star of the Boomerang Nebula in an ejection process known as a bipolar outflow. The nebula's name is derived from...