In this processed Spitzer Space Telescope image, baby star HH 46/47 can be
seen blowing two massive "bubbles." The star is 1,140 light-years away
from Earth.
The infant star can be seen as a white spot toward the center of the
Spitzer image. The two bubbles are shown as hollow elliptical shells of
bluish-green material extending from the star. Wisps of green in the image
reveal warm molecular hydrogen gas, while the bluish tints are formed by
starlight scattered by surrounding dust.
These bubbles formed when powerful jets of gas, traveling at 200 to 300
kilometers per second, or about 120 to 190 miles per second, smashed into
the cosmic cloud of gas and dust that surrounds HH 46/47. The red specks
at the end of each bubble show the presence of hot sulfur and iron gas
where the star's narrow jets are currently crashing head-on into the
cosmic cloud's gas and dust material.
Whenever astronomers observe a star, or snap a stellar portrait, through
the lens of any telescope, they know that what they are seeing is slightly
blurred. To clear up the blurring in Spitzer images, astronomers at the
Jet Propulsion Laboratory developed an image processing technique for
Spitzer called Hi-Res deconvolution.
This process reduces blurring and makes the image sharper and cleaner,
enabling astronomers to see the emissions around forming stars in greater
detail. When scientists applied this image processing technique to the
Spitzer image of HH 46/47, they were able to see winds from the star and
jets of gas that are carving the celestial bubbles.
This infrared image is a three-color composite, with data at 3.6 microns
represented in blue, 4.5 and 5.8 microns shown in green, and 24 microns
represented as red.
