Star formation : the generation and propagation of jets from young stars

Abstract

While much progress has been made in recent decades, there are many outstanding questions about the star formation process, including how jets/outflows from young stars are launched and travel away from their source. This thesis constitutes an observational contribution to understanding the generation and propagation of jets and outflows from pre-main sequence stars. Long standing observational difficulties lie in the fact that young stars are often heavily embedded. Furthermore, due to the relatively small spatial and temporal scales, physical properties of jet/outflows can only be deduced from high angular resolution data. Consequently, to overcome these obstacles, this work focusses on more evolved, and hence less embedded, T Tauri stars and harnesses the high spatial resolution of the Hubble Space Telescope at optical and near ultraviolet wavelengths.