Spitzer Telescope Witnesses Star Being Born

Arvisp tips news of a discovery by astronomers using the Spitzer Space Telescope and the Submillimeter Array in Hawaii of the youngest known star in a nearby star-forming region. From the Yale press release: "Astronomers think L1448-IRS2E is in between the prestellar phase, when a particularly dense region of a molecular cloud first begins to clump together, and the protostar phase, when gravity has pulled enough material together to form a dense, hot core out of the surrounding envelope. ... Most protostars are between one to 10 times as luminous as the Sun, with large dust envelopes that glow at infrared wavelengths. Because L1448-IRS2E is less than one tenth as luminous as the Sun, the team believes the object is too dim to be considered a true protostar. Yet they also discovered that the object is ejecting streams of high-velocity gas from its center, confirming that some sort of preliminary mass has already formed and the object has developed beyond the prestellar phase. This kind of outflow is seen in protostars (as a result of the magnetic field surrounding the forming star), but has not been seen at such an early stage until now."

Comments

Short but not short enough

[JoshuaZ]

Unfortunately, when they say that the protostar phase is short they mean on astronomical timescales. The protostar phase lasts on the order of tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of years. So it is unlikely that we are going to be able to have the opportunity to watch a protostar become a star.

Re: Short but not short enough

[Black Parrot]

Yes, but seeing these phases from various stars will eventually give them the picture they need. They don't need to see the entire life cycle of a single star. As long as they can view the highlights, and piece them together in the proper order, it's almost as good as watching it reel to reel so to speak considering the long time span for the event and the fact that our span is so relatively short.

It sounds like this one may cause them to rethink the standing model of starbirth already. But maybe it's just an odd one.

Perseus is going to be pissed

[buchner.johannes]

TFA shows the Orion [nebula].

Re:Perseus is going to be pissed

[ogre7299]

An actual Spitzer image of L1448 is here: http://www.astro.lsa.umich.edu/~jjtobin/images/L1448.jpg and the preprint of the Astrophysical Journal paper is located here: http://arxiv.org/abs/1004.2443