English: This image shows an object known as HH 151, a bright jet of glowing material trailed by an intricate, orange-hued plume of gas and dust. It is located some 460 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), near to the young, tumultuous star HL Tau.
In the first few hundred thousand years of life, new stars like HL Tau 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 kilometres per second and collide violently with nearby clumps of dust and gas, creating wispy, billowing structures known as Herbig-Haro objects — like HH 151 seen in the image above.
Such objects are very common in star-forming regions. They are short-lived, and their motion and evolution can actually be seen over very short timescales, on the order of years. They quickly race away from the newly-forming star that emitted them, colliding with new clumps of material and glowing brightly before fading away.
A version of this image was entered into the Hidden Treasures image processing competition by Gilles Chapdelaine.
ESA/Hubble images, videos and web texts are released by the ESA under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license and may on a non-exclusive basis be reproduced without fee provided they are clearly and visibly credited. Detailed conditions are below; see the ESA copyright statement for full information. For images created by NASA or on the hubblesite.org website, or for ESA/Hubble images on the esahubble.org site before 2009, use the {{PD-Hubble}} tag.
Conditions:
The full image or footage credit must be presented in a clear and readable manner to all users, with the wording unaltered (for example: "ESA/Hubble"). Web texts should be credited to ESA/Hubble (except when used by media). The credit should not be hidden or disassociated from the image footage. Links should be active if the credit is online. See the usage rights Q&A section on the ESA copyright page for guidance.
ESA/Hubble materials may not be used to state or imply the endorsement by ESA/Hubble or any ESA/Hubble employee of a commercial product or service.
ESA/Hubble requests a copy of the product sent to them to be indexed in their archive.
If an image shows an identifiable person, using that image for commercial purposes may infringe that person's right of privacy, and separate permission should be obtained from the individual.
If images or visuals are changed significantly from the original work (apart from resizing, cropping), we suggest that the changes are mentioned after the credit line. For example "Original image by ESA/Hubble (M. Kornmesser), warping and recolouring by NN".
Notes:
Note that this general permission does not extend to the use of ESA/Hubble's logo, which shall remain protected and may not be used or reproduced without prior and individual written consent of ESA/Hubble.
Also note that music, scientific papers and code on the esahubble.org site are not released under this license and can not be used for non-ESA/Hubble products.
By reproducing ESA/Hubble material, in part or in full, the user acknowledges the terms on which such use is permitted.