European Space Agency Shares Pictures Of ‘Path Left By Santa’s Sleigh’

The Christmas season came and went by in a jiffy. From delving into the festive fervour, relishing plum cakes, sipping on hot chocolate, and enjoying with friends and family, it was the time to sit back and relax. While many around the globe were busy with Christmas celebrations and leaving no stone unturned to make the most of the holiday season, an interesting astral phenomenon quietly took place in the sky. Recently, the European Space Agency (ESA) dropped a string of pictures of a “path left by Santa’s sleigh”. On social media, this gorgeous picture of Herbig-Haro objects has received a lot of attention.

Bright nebulous patches known as Herbig-Haro objects are connected to newly formed stars. They are created when surrounding clouds of gas and dust smash with narrow jets of partly ionized gas released by stars at several hundred kilometers per second. The carousel of images dropped by ESA shows the same. The post was shared on Instagram on Christmas and it has blown away the minds of astrophiles. “Follow Santa’s path. On 25 December 2021, an Ariane 5 rocket followed Santa Claus and launched Esa Webb into space. Today, Webb brings what looks like the path left by Santa’s sleigh,” reads the caption.

A post shared by ESA – European Space Agency (@europeanspaceagency)

After going on to explain what Herbig-Haro objects are, ESA moved forward to describe the image. The explanation read, “HH 797, which dominates the lower half of this image, is located close to the young open star cluster IC 348, which is located near the eastern edge of the Perseus dark cloud complex. The bright infrared objects in the upper portion of the image are thought to host two further protostars”.

“Using ground-based observations, researchers have previously found that for cold molecular gas associated with HH 797; most of the red-shifted gas is found to the south, while the blue-shifted gas is to the north. A gradient was also found across the outflow, such that at a given distance from the young central star, the velocity of the gas near the eastern edge of the jet is more red-shifted than that of the gas on the western edge. This is due to two almost parallel outflows with their separate series of shocks,” continues an excerpt of the post.

Amazed by the phenomenon, a social media user wrote, “Wonderful Christmas Present, Thanks”. “What a magnificence,” quipped another. “Magical” read another comment.

Were you taken aback by the Herbig-Haro objects too?