Glimpses of Coronal Rain

Despite its incredible heat, our sun‘s corona is so faint compared to the rest of the star that we can rarely make it out except during a total solar eclipse. But a new adaptive optic technique has given us coronal images with unprecedented detail.

These images come from the 1.6-meter Goode Solar Telescope at Big Bear Solar Observatory, and they required some 2,200 adjustments to the instrument’s mirror every second to counter atmospheric distortions that would otherwise blur the images. With the new technique, the team was able to sharpen their resolution from 1,000 kilometers all the way down to 63 kilometers, revealing heretofore unseen details of plasma from solar prominences dancing in the sun’s magnetic field and cooling plasma falling as coronal rain.

The team hope to upgrade the 4-meter Daniel K. Inouye Solar Telescope with the technology next, which will enable even finer imagery. (Image credit: Schmidt et al./NJIT/NSO/AURA/NSF; research credit: D. Schmidt et al.; via Gizmodo)

#flowVisualization #fluidDynamics #magneticField #magnetohydrodynamics #physics #plasma #science #solarDynamics #stellarEvolution

Interstellar Jets

This JWST image shows a couple of Herbig-Hero objects, seen in infrared. These bright objects form when jets of fast-moving energetic particles are expelled from the poles of a newborn star. Those particles hit pockets of gas and dust, forming glowing, hot shock waves like those seen here in red. The star that birthed the object is out of view to the lower-right. The bright blue light surrounded by red spirals that sits near the tip of the shock waves is actually a distant spiral galaxy that happens to be aligned with our viewpoint. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI/JWST; via APOD)

#astrophysics #fluidDynamics #jets #physics #science #shockwave #stellarEvolution

A Stellar Look at NGC 602

The young star cluster NGC 602 sits some 200,000 light years away in the Small Magellanic Cloud. Seen here in near- and mid-infrared, the cluster is a glowing cradle of star forming conditions similar to the early universe. A large nebula, made up of multicolored dust and gas, surrounds the star cluster. Its dusty finger-like pillars could be an example of Rayleigh-Taylor instabilities or plumes shaped by energetic stellar jets. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/JWST; via Colossal)

#astronomy #fluidDynamics #fluidsAsArt #instability #nebula #physics #science #stellarEvolution

Jets, Shocks, and a Windblown Cavity

As material collapses onto a protostar, these young stars often form stellar jets that point outward along their axis of rotation. Made up of plasma, these jets shoot into the surrounding material, their interactions creating bright parabolic cavities like the one seen here. This is half of LDN 1471; the protostar’s other jet and cavity are hidden by dust but presumably mirror the bright shape seen here. (The protostar itself is the bright spot at the parabola’s peak.) Although the cavity is visibly striated, it’s not currently known what causes this feature. Perhaps some form of magnetohydrodynamic instability? (Image credit: NASA/Hubble/ESA/J. Schmidt; via APOD)

#astronomy #astrophysics #fluidDynamics #instability #jets #physics #plasma #science #stellarEvolution #stellarWind

Although the space between stars is empty by terrestrial standards, it’s not devoid of matter. There’s a scattering of cold gas and dust, pocked by areas known as prestellar cores with densities of a few thousand particles per cubic centimeter. This is just enough matter to help gravity eventually win its tug of war with the forces that would drive molecules apart.

When shock waves pass through these regions — whether thrown off a dying star or a newly birthed one — they compress the material, kickstarting the process of stellar formation. Passing shock waves can also shake loose molecules stuck to the dust, providing key tracer elements that astronomers can use to visualize shock waves and the areas they affect. To learn more, see this article over at Physics Today. (Image credit: NASA/ESA/CSA/STSCI/K. Pontoppidan/A. Pagan; see also Physics Today)

https://fyfluiddynamics.com/2024/06/star-birthing-shock-waves/

#astronomy #astrophysics #flowVisualization #fluidDynamics #physics #science #shockWave #stellarEvolution