Chandra Release - April 09, 2008

Visual Description: DG Tau

This graphic features a young star named DG Tau.  DG Tau is depicted in two separate frames, with the left one showing a blue and white X-ray image and the right frame with an orange and white artist’s illustration.  In the left frame, the object has a small bulbous center with a set of small “arms” coming out its side and even smaller “legs” towards the bottom. The artist’s illustration also has an object that is shaped like a donut with jets coming out of the top and bottom of its center. The image is from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and  shows the first double-sided X-ray jet ever detected from a young star. A similar jet may have been launched from the young Sun and could have had a significant impact on the early solar system.  The bright source of X-rays in the middle of the image is DG Tau and the jet runs from the top left to the bottom right, extending to about 70 billion miles away from the star, or about 700 times the Earth-Sun separation. A detailed analysis of this image shows that the counter jet (top-left) has, on average, higher energy X-rays than the forward jet (bottom-right). The likely explanation is that some of the lower energy X-rays in the counter jet are absorbed by a disk around DG Tau, as shown in the accompanying illustration, showing the star, disk and the inner regions of the jets.