Everything you ever wanted to know about V1647 Ori and McNeil's Nebula

 

An artist's impression of what might be happening behind the thick dust disc surrounding the young Sun-like star V1647 Ori. X-ray observations by ESA's XMM-Newton, NASA's Chandra and Japan's Suzaku space observatories have probed the interior of the dust disc to find a rapidly-rotating star spinning with a period of one day. At 80 per cent the mass of our Sun and with a diameter approximately four times larger, spinning at this rate nears break-up speed for a star of this size. The data also suggest that matter is accreting onto the stellar surface in two pancake-shaped hotspots located on opposite sides of the star, in which the matter heats up and the high temperature plasma is confined. Copyright: ESA/C. Carreau

HH 110, a half light-year wide "ticker-tape"

The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured a new image of Herbig-Haro 110, a geyser of hot gas flowing from a newborn star.

This image is a composite of separate exposures acquired by the ACS and WFC3 instruments. Several filters were used to sample various wavelengths. The color results from assigning different hues (colors) to each monochromatic (grayscale) image associated with an individual filter. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)