Energetic Jets from a Budding Solar System The image on the left
from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory 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 young star,
named DG Tau, is located in the Taurus star-forming region,
about 450 light years from Earth. 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, led by Manuel Guedel of the
Institute of Astronomy, ETH Zuerich in Switzerland, 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 (rig