Supersonic "bullets" in the Orion Nebula

[Blob]

An image released today by the Gemini Observatory brings into focus a new and remarkably detailed view of supersonic "bullets" of gas and the wakes created as they pierce through clouds of molecular hydrogen in the Orion Nebula. The image was made possible with new laser guide star adaptive optics technology that corrects in real time for image distortions caused by Earth's atmosphere.

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Bullet-like clumps of gas hurtle through the Orion stellar nursery at supersonic speed in a new image from the Gemini North observatory. The unusual structures are revealed in unprecedented detail by newly commissioned laser-equipped optics.
The so-called 'bullets' are located in the Orion Nebula, a star-forming region about 1500 light years from Earth. Each of the few dozen observed is a dense clump of gas about as wide as Pluto's orbit around the Sun.

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Image Credit: Gemini Observatory

[Peter Wilson]

The bullets are speeding outward from the cloud at up to 400 kilometers (250 miles) per second. This is more than a thousand times faster than the speed of sound. The name "bullet" is somewhat misleading since these objects are truly gigantic. The typical size of one of the bullet tips is about ten times the size of Pluto's orbit around the Sun. The wakes shown in the image are about a fifth of a light-year long.

Wow!

How much mass do these "bullets" have?

Are they re-coils from SN core collapses?

Should congress ban whatever weapon was used to fire them?

[Blob]

How much mass do these "bullets" have?

Hum,
I don't know...

(less than a solar mass)

http://ifront.org/wiki/Orion_South_Outflows_Paper

[NEOWatcher]

The name "bullet" is somewhat misleading

Um, I'd say the term "supersonic" is a little more misleading.

Still interesting.

The bullets are relatively young, with their ages estimated to be less than a thousand years since ejection.

What do they base this on? Is it just the projected source of the "bullets"? Or is there more to it?

[Kaptain K]

Um, I'd say the term "supersonic" is a little more misleading.

In what way. They are moving faster than the speed of a "compression - rarefaction" wave in the gas of the nebula.

[NEOWatcher]

In what way. They are moving faster than the speed of a "compression - rarefaction" wave in the gas of the nebula.

The very fact that that pointed out "bullet" as misleading, when I can not see how it could actually lead me somewhere else. Where "supersonic" leads me in all sorts of directions.

If they are willing to say supersonic, then why not hypersonic? Are they trying to say "goes really fast", or are they trying to say "fast in relation to the speed of the wave in this medium"? What is the wave speed of the medium? Does a wake imply a wave?

[publiusr]

If I didn't know better--I'd have said it was ballistics gel.

[Cougar]

Well, this is pretty interesting... and confusing. I always thought images like this resulted from static blobs of more dense gas or whatever getting "eroded" by the stellar wind of a nearby O or B type star. If these "bullets" of gas are moving so fast, what's keeping them from dissipating quickly? How could they have survived intact from whatever violent birth produced them?

[Peter Wilson]

Yes, they do bear a striking resembence to the "Pillars of Creation" blobs.

Like gamma ray bursts, a lot of question yet to be answered.