NASA’s Hubble Telescope spots rare object that resembles a space lightsaber

Pagination of Luke Skywalker. A recently released view from the Hubble Space Telescope of a bar of gas glowing against the starry darkness of space puts me in a very Star Wars mood. The European Space Agency described the object as a “relatively rare celestial phenomenon” in a statement on Monday.

What we see in the image is a Herbig-Haro object (named after astronomers George Herbig and Guillermo Haro) called HH111. The setting is a region of star formation in the constellation Orion. The gas jet looks like a blue lightsaber.

Herbig-Haro objects have dramatic origin stories. “Newly formed stars are often very active, and in some cases they expel very narrow jets of rapidly moving ionized gas – a gas so hot that its molecules and atoms have lost their electrons, making the gas very charged. “said ESA. “The streams of ionized gas then collide with the clouds of gas and dust surrounding the newly formed stars at speeds of hundreds of kilometers per second.”

NASA is the agency that first explained to me how Herbig-Haro objects can look like lightsabers in space. In 2015, NASA shared a Hubble view of Herbig-Haro Jet HH24 just before the opening of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, calling it a “double-bladed lightsaber” with a “Jedi-type dust cloak”.

The spectacular view of HH111 comes from Hubble’s Wide Field Camera 3, which sees both optical (close to what our human eyes see) and infrared. The ability to make infrared observations gives Hubble the clarity to look through gas and dust to clearly see objects like this.

Hubble is a joint project of NASA and ESA. He has now spent over 31 years observing the universe. He overcame many technical difficulties, including one serious computer problem earlier this year.

Hubble won’t live on forever, but it could go on for years to come, giving us more images that tempt me to whisper “the Force be with you” on my computer screen.

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