[11] The southern binary's brightness varies dramatically over seemingly short timescales in the infrared.

During this phase, a star does not undergo nuclear fusion within its core; it shines due to the residual heat given off by its collapse.

This causes a T Tauri star to vary in brightness over the course of weeks or months as they accrete matter.

Specifically, it appears that T Tau N is actually supposed to still be an embedded protostar, but it was likely ejected from the dense cloud it was born in sometime in the past few thousand years.

[7] The complex outflow system created by the stars is poorly understood, particularly in how it evolves over time.

They can be thought of as shock fronts for the jets as the fast moving material slams into the cold gas and dust surrounding the system.

[8] The most noticeable nebulosity is the NGC 1555 cloud, known as Hind's Variable Nebula, only an arcminute west of T Tauri.

This was the nebulosity first discovered by Hind in 1852, which is now known to be a reflection nebula due to the spectra being very similar to that of T Tauri itself.

When he noticed the description of Hind's Nebula did not match what he was seeing, he asked his colleague Edward Emerson Barnard to take a look since he had more experience with nebulosity and finer eyes.

The patches are easily observed using the H-Alpha emission line, and by measuring the Doppler Shift of the two lobes, it appears they originated from the T Tau system.

He did not bother properly reporting this due to his lack of interest in nebulae, and instead wrote privately to d'Arrest, who would publish the finding.

It is likely Struve truly did observe something, especially considering that d'Arrest confirmed it, but as of 2022 there is no agreed explanation for the cause of this phenomenon.

[7][22] In the 2014 video game Elite: Dangerous, the star system and surrounding nebula are featured as a location that players can visit.