Welcome to this week’s AITN Lite and, as usual, I’ve attempted to make a link between the full bulletin and this. week’s AITN discussed multiple JWST results one of which was Jupiter-sized objects in the Orion molecular cloud, whereas this will discuss ongoing star formation in that cloud. The article in question can be found here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-67243772

Star formation starts with a molecular cloud. The molecular cloud, consisting of gas and dust, is disrupted, causing a turbulent environment. This turbulence causes regions within the cloud to become denser, and gravity takes over causing them to collapse. These regions become even denser and hotter, and begin to spin, forming a disc. Eventually, the protostar (the forming star) begins to burn hydrogen in the form of nuclear fusion. The stellar wind of the star will then, eventually, blow away the molecular gas from which it formed, leaving the star to burn.

These images of HH212 display the part of the sequence around when the collapsing region begins to spin and form a disc and starts to burn hydrogen. When this happens, the forming star needs to conserve angular momentum, and the only way it can do this is by producing an outflow. This outflow will stop the forming star from ripping apart. The magnetic fields, that could be an important part of the formation process (this is still a very active area of research), form and force the material into these bi-polar outflows. This is what is seen in the image from the article. The outflows hit the ambient gas and causes these amazing bow shocks! Monitoring of this object over years has shown how it has changed over the decades, and since it’s a very young star (less than 50,000 years) there is noticeable change!