Herbig-Haro object 151

Herbig-Haro object 151 (abbreviated to HH 151, and also known as HL Tau and LDN 1551) is a HH object, located at a distance of around 460 light years in the constellation of Taurus.

This bright jet of glowing gas and dust is near the young star HL Tau. This type of objects are very common in star forming regions and they are short lived. They are formed from material that falls towards new-born stars. The mixture of gas and dust forms a hot disk that rotates around the star. Disk-material falls towards the surface of the star, and the excessive amount is launched from its poles, in the form of a narrow high velocity beam (i.e., 100s km/s). 

Image: Composite optical image of HH 151 taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The image was created using broadband filters that are centred at 675 nm (R-band, magenta) and 814 nm (I-band, orange), together with narrow band filters that focused on the emission of ionized hydrogen (Hα, red) and ionized sulfur ([S II], blue). 

Image Credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA. Acknowledgement: Gilles Chapdelaine

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