Chamaeleon â€“ the Southern Stellar Lizard *new*

Chamaeleons lived in lands exotic to 16th-century Europeans. Yet although color-changing lizards are fascinating, Chamaeleon the constellation is a small, dim southern sky constellation with no associated mythology. Why does it even exist? Is there anything of interest there?

Chamaeleon â€“ the Southern Stellar Lizard

It's light years long and looks like a cosmic tornado, but it's a powerful jet catalogued as HH 49/50,

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Though such energetic outflows are well known to be associated with the formation of young stars, the exact cause of the spiraling structures apparent in this case is still mysterious. The embryonic star responsible for the 100-kilometer per second jet is located just off the top of the picture, while the bright star seen near the tip of the jet may just by chance lie along the line of sight. In the false-color infrared image, the tornado glows with infrared light generated as the outflow heats surrounding dust clouds. The color coding shows a trend from red to blue hues at the tornado's tip indicating a systematic increase in emission at shorter wavelengths. The trend is thought to indicate an increase in molecular excitation closer to where the head of the jet is impacting interstellar gas. HH49/50 is about 450 light-years distant, located in the Chamaeleon I molecular cloud.

Credit: J. Bally (Univ. of Colorado) et al., JPL-Caltech, NASA

Here is a view of dark cloud Chamaeleon I. In the center we see blue reflection nebulae highlighted by thin dust surrounding the bright stars. Top and lower left are dark clouds whose thick dust blocks background light.

Credit: FORS Team, 8.2-meter VLT Antu, ESO

Two young stars of the quadruple system DI Chamaeleontis surrounded by a ring of cascading dust. DI Cha contains two sets of binary stars, and the system is still young enough to be surrounded by dust. It's located in the Chamaeleon I dark cloud.

Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA.

Awesome pictures!