Jets from Young Stars: Astronomers glimpse a detailed look at the fitful, eruptive, and dynamic processes accompanying the final stages of a star's "construction." NASA's Hubble Space Telescope images provide a dramatically clear look at collapsing circumstellar disks of dust and gas that build stars and provide the ingredients for a planetary system. The pictures also show blowtorch-like jets of hot gas funneled from deep within several embryonic systems and machine gun-like bursts of material fired from the stars at speeds of a half-million mph. The Hubble observations shed new light on one of modern astronomy's central questions: How do tenuous clouds of interstellar gas and dust make stars like our Sun.

Name: Jets
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Young Stellar ObjectMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Jet
Category: Stars
Constellation: Orion
Release date: 6 June 1995, 20:00
Credit: Credit: J. Hester (Arizona State University), the WFPC 2 Investigation Definition Team, and NASA

Jet from young star (HH-47): This view of a three trillion mile-long jet called HH-47 reveals a very complicated jet pattern that indicates the star (hidden inside a dust cloud near the left edge of the image) might be wobbling, possibly caused by the gravitational pull of a companion star.

Name: HH 47
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Young Stellar ObjectMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Jet
Category: Stars
Constellation: Vela
Distance: 1500 light years
Release date: 6 June 1995, 20:00
Credit: J. Morse/STScI, and NASA/ESA

Jets from Young Stars (HH-47): Resembling the vertebrae of an imaginary space alien, this one-half light-year long jet of gas has burst out of a dark cloud of gas and dust which hides the newly forming star located in the lower left corner of the image.

Name: HH 47
Type: Milky Way : Star : Evolutionary Stage : Young Stellar ObjectMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Jet
Category: Stars
Constellation: Vela
Distance: 1400 light years
Release date: 6 June 1995, 20:00
Credit: J. Morse (STScI), and NASA/ESA Co-investigators: B. Reipurth (European Southern Observ.), S. Heathcote (Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observ.), P. Hartigan (Rice Univ.), J. Bally (Univ. of Colorado), R. Schwartz (Univ. of Missouri), J. Stone (Univ. of Maryland)

White Dwarf Stars in M4: A view of globular cluster M4 (fourth object in the Messier catalog of star clusters and nebulae). The nearest globular cluster to Earth (7, 000 light-years away), and containing more than 100, 000 stars, M4 was the target of a Hubble Space Telescope search for white dwarf stars.

Name: M 4, Messier 4, NGC 6121
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : Globular
Category: Star ClustersStars
Constellation: Scorpius
Distance: 5500 light years
Release date: 28 August 1995, 06:00
Credit: Kitt Peak National Observatory 0.9-meter telescope, National Optical Astronomy Observatories; courtesy M. Bolte (Universityof California, Santa Cruz)

Comet Hale-Bopp: This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope picture of comet Hale-Bopp shows a remarkable "pinwheel" pattern and a blob of free-flying debris near the nucleus.  The bright clump of light along the spiral (above the nucleus, which is near the center of the frame) may be a piece of the comet's icy crust that was ejected into space by a combination of ice evaporation and the comet's rotation, and which then disintegrated into a bright cloud of particles. This full-field picture, taken with the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 (in WF mode), shows the comet against a stellar backdrop in the constellation Sagittarius.

Name: Hale-Bopp
Type: Solar System : Interplanetary Body : Comet
Category: Solar System
Release date: 10 October 1995, 05:00
Credit: H.A. Weaver (Applied Research Corp.), P.D. Feldman (The Johns Hopkins University), and NASA/ESA

Pillars of Creation: These columns that resemble stalagmites protruding from the floor of a cavern columns are in fact cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that act as incubators for new stars. Inside them and on their surface astronomers have found knots or globules of denser gas. These are called EGGs (acronym for "Evaporating Gaseous Globules"). Inside at least some of the EGGs stars being formed. Undersea coral? Enchanted castles? Space serpents? These eerie, dark pillar-like structures are actually columns of cool interstellar hydrogen gas and dust that are also incubators for new stars. The pillars protrude from the interior wall of a dark molecular cloud like stalagmites from the floor of a cavern.

Name: Eagle Nebula, Messier 16
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Serpens Cauda
Distance: 7000 light years
Release date: 5 January 2015, 23:15
Credit: Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University), and NASA/ESA

The Eagle Nebula: This eerie, dark structure, resembling an imaginary sea serpent's head, is a column of cool molecular hydrogen gas (two atoms of hydrogen in each molecule) and dust that is an incubator for new stars. The stars are embedded inside finger-like protrusions extending from the top of the nebula. Each 'fingertip' is somewhat larger than our own solar system.

Name: Eagle Nebula, Messier 16
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Serpens Cauda
Distance: 7000 light years
Release date: 2 November 1995, 06:00
Credit: Jeff Hester and Paul Scowen (Arizona State University), and NASA/ESA

Maelstrom of star birth: This is a stunning picture of the most famous stellar factory. In the Orion Nebula hundreds of stars are being born, or are in the early stages of their infancy. Most fascinating is the discovery of small planetary systems being formed around some of the stars in this nebula. This spectacular colour panorama of the center the Orion nebula is one of the largest pictures ever assembled from individual images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture, seamlessly composited from a mosaic of 15 separate fields, covers an area of sky about five percent the area covered by the full Moon.

Name: Messier 42, Orion Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Orion
Distance: 1400 light years
Release date: 20 November 1995, 06:00
Credit: NASA, ESA, C.R. O'Dell (Rice University), and S.K. Wong (Rice University)

The Center of the Orion Nebula: This spectacular colour panorama of the centre the Orion nebula is one of the largest pictures ever assembled from individual images taken with the Hubble Space Telescope. The picture, seamlessly composited from a mosaic of 15 separate fields, covers an area of sky about five percent the area covered by the full Moon.

Name: Messier 42, Orion Nebula
Type: Milky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Orion
Distance: 1400 light years
Release date: 20 November 1995, 06:00
Credit: C.R. O'Dell (Rice University), and NASA/ESA

Trapezium, Orion Nebula: The Orion nebula has a dramatic surface topography — of glowing  gasses instead of rock — with  peaks, valleys and walls.  They are  illuminated and heated by a torrent of energetic ultraviolet light from  its four hottest and most massive stars, called the Trapezium, which are  pictured here. In addition to the Trapezium, this stellar cavern contains 700  hundred other young stars at various stages of formation.  High-speed  jets of hot gas spewed by some of the infant stars send supersonic shock  waves tearing into the nebula at  100,000 miles per hour.

Name: Messier 42, NGC 1976, Orion Nebula, Trapezium Cluster
Type: Milky Way : Star : Grouping : Cluster : OpenMilky Way : Nebula : Type : Star Formation
Category: Nebulae
Constellation: Orion
Distance: 1400 light years
Release date: 20 November 1995, 06:00
Credit: NASA, C.R. O'Dell and S.K. Wong (Rice University)