HH24

Wallpaper Description:

Two jets of energized gas stream across this image, ejected from the poles of a young star. If the jets (streaming at several hundred kilometers per second) collide with the surrounding gas and dust they can clear vast spaces, and create curved shock waves, seen as knotted clumps called Herbig-Haro objects. This is HH 24, about 1,500 light years distant, in the constellation Orion.

ESA / Hubble & NASA, D. Padgett (GSFC), T. Megeath (University of Toledo), and B. Reipurth (University of Hawaii)