NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has captured a stunning image of a triple-star system located around 550 light-years away. This stellar trio, which includes the variable star HP Tau, HP Tau G2, and HP Tau G3, illuminates the surrounding clouds of a reflection nebula.
NASA explained that HP Tau belongs to the T Tauri star type, which includes young variable stars that have not yet undergone nuclear fusion. These stars, which are usually less than 10 million years old, are sometimes shrouded in the leftovers of the gas and dust clouds from which they formed. T Tauri stars are notable for their brightness changes, which can be linked to both periodic and random events such as surface flares and rotating sunspots.
HP Tau, located 550 light-years from Earth, is the triple-star system’s youngest component. The Hubble Space Telescope, which was launched in 1990, has made enormous contributions to our understanding of the cosmos, changing fields such as planetary atmospheric analysis and the discovery of dark energy.
