The changes of the Trifid Nebula

The image you see in the video is not an illustration, nor an animation, they are real images, although superimposed so that we can see the evolution of the last 29 years, the difference that has existed between the first and the last image, the NASA press release was published on April 20, 2026 and they are images taken by the Hubble space telescope between 1997 and 2026. This nebula is located about 5,000 light years in the direction of the constellation of Sagittarius, the entire image is approximately 4 light years wide.

The most interesting thing is the Herbig-Haro object 399, Herbig-Haro is a category of objects, it is not specifically called that, the object itself is a jet of plasma that is periodically ejected by a star in formation, it is something called Herbig-Haro objects, it can also be seen very clearly, it looks almost like a unicorn.

The 29 years that have elapsed between the observations show how this plasma jet has been expanding, which also does not travel at a constant speed throughout its entire journey, has knots and variations, due to the intensity with which it is expelled by the forming star and also to the density of the interstellar gas with which the jet collides on its way. The image is somewhat reminiscent of the smoke expelled by a smoker, although it is a much more concentrated jet and, of course, at cosmic speeds.

Although NASA in the statement does not offer specific data on the speed at which the jet is expanding, thanks to what we know about this type of objects and previous measurements with the Hubble space telescope, it has been calculated that in these 29 years the front of the jet has advanced between 7.1 to 18.7 times the distance that currently separates us from the Voyager 1 spacecraft, the spacecraft that has reached the furthest in space. What we see is also only half of the jet, the one that corresponds to one of the poles of the star in formation. The opposite, that of the other pole, is found within the dust cloud, which we see as dark brown, and also appears as irregular orange and red lines, where a kind of natural V is observed within that dust cloud.

The question is, why those jets? Shouldn't everything fall into the star when it is forming, it turns out that before a star as we know it is born, what is called a proto star is formed from that cloud of gas and dust. The material is certainly falling towards the center of the star by gravity, but before falling it forms an accretion disk around the protostar, the star with information that has not initiated nuclear fusion in its core, it would be a bit like what we see in a drain, that spiral that is formed of water before the water falls through the hole in the drain and not all the material in the disk falls directly on the protostar. Part of it is ejected in the form of bipolar plasma jets at very high speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second.

The main mechanism that causes these jets to be expelled is magnetism and centrifugal force, which would be magnetocentrifugal, and at that moment is when a Herbig-Haro structure is created. These plasma jets are spectacular in some cases, they are rare cases, but in some the jet collisions can compress gas close to the molecular cloud and trigger the formation of new stars or protostars near the star that is being formed.

These Herbig-Haro structures last a short time on a cosmic scale, just a few tens of thousands of years, between 10,000 to 50,000 years, although some plasma flows can leave traces for a little longer, but then they dissipate in the material of the nebula itself, it is like a stellar “umbilical cord” that is cut and ends up disintegrating in the material of the stellar nursery, at the end, when the star begins to shine, activating its heart of nuclear fusion, there will be no visible trace of those cosmic plasma jets, not even a small navel that reminds us of the birth of the star.

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