The Hubble Space Telescope has captured a breathtaking image of a dynamic jet bursting forth from a young star’s cocoon of gas and dust, marking the star’s grand entrance into the universe. The Hubble Telescope, in its exploration, zoomed in on the young multi-star system known as FS Tau, revealing the infant star carving its path out of the nebula that gave it life. Situated 450 light-years away from our planet, FS Tau resides within the Taurus-Auriga region, a celestial nursery teeming with dark, molecular clouds of gas and dust. This region is a cradle for the birth of protostars and young stars alike.
In this 2.8 million-year-old nebula, astronomers have previously identified binary infant stars, and now, a second nascent star, designated FS Tau B, has made its presence known. Both FS Tau B and the earlier discovered infant stars, forming a binary system named FS Tau A (Haro 6-5A), are enveloped in glowing gas and dust. This glow is the remnants of the dense matter that collapsed to form these celestial bodies.
A striking Hubble image reveals FS Tau B, partially hidden by a dark, vertical column of dust. This feature is believed to be the edge of a protoplanetary disk—a disk-shaped accumulation of gas and dust surrounding the infant star. This leftover material from the star’s formation is expected to eventually come together to form planets.
FS Tau B is still in the protostar phase, actively accumulating material from its surroundings. When it gathers enough mass, the pressure within FS Tau B will reach a critical point, triggering nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium in its core. This nuclear process will mark the beginning of FS Tau B’s main sequence lifetime as a star.
Unlike fully formed stars, protostars like FS Tau B shine not from nuclear fusion but from the heat generated by the collapse of their birth cloud and the ongoing accretion of material. Protostars are known to emit fast-moving jets of highly energetic particles, and FS Tau B is a prime example. The jet from FS Tau B is particularly notable for being double-sided yet unusually asymmetrical, possibly due to the star expelling mass at varying rates. This bright blue streak in the image could be the result of such asymmetrical mass ejection.
FS Tau B is also classified as a Herbig-Haro object, a type of celestial body formed when jets from a young star collide with nearby gas and dust clouds at high speeds, creating glowing patches around the nebulae that harbor protostars.
Upon transitioning from the protostar phase, FS Tau B will evolve into a T Tauri star, a young stellar object on its journey to becoming a main sequence star, much like our 4.6 billion-year-old Sun.