Violent birth of a star, as seen from NASA Hubble Space Telescope

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How very abundantly splendid and cool.

I have a hard time forming a picture of “supersonic” flow of a low-density media. Is it a matter of the material not transmitting compression waves and just absorbing momentum from the light and other components of the stellar wind? Since it’s near vacuum, I’m assuming the supersonic speed of the medium is very low. Of course, I’m thinking in terms of aircraft in a medium rather than the medium itself moving. What does supersonic mean in this context?

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