Hubble observes Jets, bubbles, and bursts of light in Taurus

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a striking view of a multiple star system called XZ Tauri, its neighbour HL Tauri and several nearby young stellar objects. 

XZ Tauri is blowing a hot bubble of gas into the surrounding space, which is filled with bright and beautiful clumps that are emitting strong winds and jets. 

These objects illuminate the region, creating a truly dramatic scene. 

Credit: ESA/Hubble/ NASA

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has snapped a striking view of a multiple star system called XZ Tauri, its neighbour HL Tauri, and several nearby young stellar objects.

XZ Tauri is blowing a hot bubble of gas into the surrounding space, which is filled with bright and beautiful clumps that are emitting strong winds and jets.

These objects illuminate the region, creating a truly dramatic scene.

This dark and ominous landscape is located some 450 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull).

It lies in the north-eastern part of a large, dark cloud known as LDN 1551.

Just to the left of centre in this image, embedded within a rust-coloured cloud, lies XZ Tauri. While it appears to be a single star, this bright spot actually consists of several stars.

It has long been known to be a binary, but one of these two stars is thought also to be a binary, making a total of three stars within a single system.

This is not the first time that Hubble has observed XZ Tauri, between the years of 1995 and 2000, a hot bubble of gas was spotted expanding outwards from the system.

This bubble can be seen as the small orange lobe very close to the top left of XZ Tauri. This gas is speeding out from the star system, leaving a trail spanning tens of billions of kilometres.

As the bubble travels it hits slower moving material, triggering pulses of light and rippling shockwaves.

Above and to the right of XZ Tauri, an equally epic scene is unfolding. Wisps of deep red seem to be streaking away from the blue-tinged clumps on the right.

This bright blue patch contains a star known as HL Tauri, which is associated with Herbig-Haro object HH 150.

Herbig-Haro objects are streaks of hot gas blasted into space by newborn and newly forming stars and LDN 1551 is particularly rich in these dramatic objects.

In the bottom right of this Hubble image is another Herbig-Haro object known as HH 30, associated with the variable star V1213 Tauri.

The star itself is hidden within a flat, bright disc of dust that is split in half by a dark lane. This dust blocks direct light from V1213 Tauri, but the star is visible via its reflected light and the prominent, knotty jets it is blasting out into space.

Hubble previously viewed HH 30, alongside XZ Tauri, with its Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 between the years of 1995 and 2000.

The observations were used to image and study the changes in disc brightness and jet strength over the five-year period.

V1213 Tauri's strong magnetic field forms the jets by funnelling and shepherding gas from the disc, accelerating it along the star's magnetic poles to form two narrow beams.

ALMA image of the young star HL Tau and its protoplanetary disk. 

This best image ever of planet formation reveals multiple rings and gaps that herald the presence of emerging planets as they sweep their orbits clear of dust and gas 

Credit: ALMA (NRAO /ESO /NAOJ); C. Brogan, B. Saxton (NRAO /AUI /NSF)

In the above image released by the European Southern Observatory today, observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter /submillimeter Array (ALMA) reveal extraordinarily fine and never-before-seen detail in the planet-forming disc around HL Tauri.

The new observations are an enormous step forward in the observation of how protoplanetary discs develop and how planets form.

Tissint meteorite fragment may contain Martian gas.

A fragment of the Tissint meteorite. Regions of black glass are thought to contain gas, rock and traces of Martian soil. 

Photograph: Natural History Museum, London

A lump of space rock that shattered the predawn calm of the Moroccan desert with a fireball and double sonic boom last year was knocked off Mars in a cosmic collision roughly 700,000 years ago.

The date of the Martian impact means the rock was flung into space and began its journey to Earth when the shared ancestor of modern humans and Neanderthals was still alive and well in Africa.

Scientists dated the collision through a fresh analysis of the remains of the meteorite, based on the exposure of its elements to intense cosmic rays during its journey through space.

The Tissint meteorite, as it is known, is particularly valuable because it was recovered before it had suffered any weathering on Earth.

Witnesses said it split in two as it fell to Earth and landed in the desert near Tata, south-east Morocco, at 2am local time on 18 July last year.

Pieces weighing between 100g and 2kg have been recovered, along with thousands of smaller fragments. The intact meteorite is estimated to have weighed 17kg.

Researchers at the Hassan II University of Casablanca found regions of black glass inside the meteorite that are thought to contain gas, rock and traces of Martian soil.

Hasnaa Chennaoui Aoudjehane

"What is really exciting in this meteorite is that it has this black glass trapped inside," said Hasnaa Chennaoui Aoudjehane, who worked on the specimen.

Further analysis of the glass and the gas locked up in its tiny bubbles may help scientists reconstruct the conditions on Mars when the rock was blasted into space.

"Those bubbles are interesting because they trapped Martian conditions at the moment the meteorite formed, and it hasn't had any exchange with other materials," Chennaoui Aoudjehane said.

The research appears in the latest issue of Science.

Nanoparticles found in moon glass bubbles explain weird lunar soil behaviour

A stunning discovery by Queensland University of Technology (QUT) soil scientist Marek Zbik of nano particles inside bubbles of glass in lunar soil could solve the mystery of why the moon's surface topsoil has many unusual properties.

Dr Zbik, from Queensland University of Technology's Science and Engineering Faculty, said scientists had long observed the strange behaviour of lunar soil but had not taken much notice of the nano and submicron particles found in the soil and their source was unknown.

Dr Zbik took the lunar soil samples to Taiwan where he could study the glass bubbles without breaking them using a new technique for studying nano materials call synchrotron-based nano tomography to look at the particles. Nano tomography is a transmission X-ray microscope which enables 3D images of nano particles to be made.

"We were really surprised at what we found," Dr Zbik said.

"Instead of gas or vapour inside the bubbles, which we would expect to find in such bubbles on Earth, the lunar glass bubbles were filled with a highly porous network of alien-looking glassy particles that span the bubbles' interior.

"It appears that the nano particles are formed inside bubbles of molten rocks when meteorites hit the lunar surface. Then they are released when the glass bubbles are pulverised by the consequent bombardment of meteorites on the moon's surface.

"This continuous pulverising of rocks on the lunar surface and constant mixing develop a type of soil which is unknown on Earth."

Dr Zbik said nano particles behaved according to the laws of quantum physics which were completely different from so called 'normal' physics' laws. Because of this, materials containing nano particles behave strangely according to our current understanding.

"Nano particles are so tiny, it is their size and not what they are made of that accounts for their exceptional properties.

"We don't understand a lot about quantum physics yet but it could be that these nano particles, when liberated from their glass bubble, mix with the other soil constituents and give lunar soil its unusual properties.

"Lunar soil is electro-statically charged so it hovers above the surface; it is extremely chemically active; and it has low thermal conductivity eg it can be 160 degrees above the surface but -40 degrees two metres below the surface.

"It is also very sticky and brittle such that its particles wear the surface off metal and glass."
Dr Zbik said the moon had no atmosphere to cushion the impact of meteorites like Earth had.

"When they hit the moon there is a very violent reaction. Huge temperatures are generated which melts the rock. The pressure goes and a vacuum is created. Bubbles occur in the molten glass rock like soft drink bubbles trying to escape the bottle.

"Our work now is to understand how those particles evolve from this process. It may also lead us to completely different way of manufacturing nanomaterials."

Dr Zbik and his research team's study was published in the International Scholarly Research Network Astronomy and Astrophysics.

To find out more and also view a 3D image from inside the lunar bubble using transmission X-Ray microscopy go to http://youtu.be/omRoS2SntMU. You can see what is inside the lunar bubble with 3D glasses.

Related Links: Queensland University of Technology