Hubble Captures the Violent Birth of a Star

The Bad Astronomer writes "In what is one of the most staggeringly beautiful Hubble pictures ever taken, a newly-born massive star is blasting four separate jets of material into its surrounding cocoon, carving out cavities in the material over two light years long. But only three of the jets appear to have matter still inside them, and the central star is off-center. This may be a gorgeous picture, but the science behind it is equally as compelling."

Comments

Was the government notified?

[roman_mir]

Were the Vogons notified of this latest development? Were all the forms properly filled in, signed, stamped and approved?

How many government forms does it take for a new star to be allowed to be born? There are all sorts of special interests that may not like this new star from appearing, it's new energy competition, there could be new life forms created, that would compete with the existing interests and it's obviously bad.

OOOOOLD

[zill]

The Bad Astronomer writes

Bad is quite the understatement here, considering that this story is over 2000 years old.

Re:OOOOOLD

[ackthpt]

The Bad Astronomer writes

Bad is quite the understatement here, considering that this story is over 2000 years old.

<Strong Bad Astronomer>My star asplode!</Strong Bad Astronomer>

Re:OOOOOLD

[Hatta]

At least he's whoring it out for science.

Re:OOOOOLD

[Tastecicles]

no i didn't. I missed super-super-superscript because I don't know how to do it.

Stellar formation?

[SirGarlon]

This may be a naive question (and will almost certainly be derided as such). I remember from Astronomy 101, many years ago, the prevailing idea about stellar formation. But I don't remember anyone ever explaining studies that verify the hypothesis is valid. What I'm saying is that it's pretty obvious this is a star surrounded by a cloud of material (gas or dust, I can't remember), but how do we know the star is forming rather than, say, dying? Or are we just supposed to take it on faith because we read it in a book?

A related question-- this is an awesomely cool picture, but does it or does it not tell us much about how stars form?

Re:Stellar formation?

[Baloroth]

but how do we know the star is forming rather than, say, dying?

You can tell because of the pixels.

Re:Stellar formation?

[jd]

We know from stellar nurseries we've seen elsewhere that the current model is largely correct. We know from spectrometry that the gas cloud is abundant in light elements and poor in elements that form in later-generation stars, and know also from spectrometry that the star itself is also very rich in light elements. Spectrometry, the the level of light given off, plus the estimated distance also tells us where in the sequence the star is, because the sequence is now very well known. We can further verify a few details -- the solar winds push gas away from the sun, but there are no solar winds before there's a sun to emit them. By measuring output and the degree of push, you can determine how long the gas cloud has been blasted at by the star. If this matches expectation, all's well. If the gas cloud shows evidence of more displacement than can be accounted for, there'd be problems. So far, all looks good.

So although the exact details of stellar formation do shift from time to time, major changes aren't likely. Minor ones, on the other hand, are commonplace. For example, some stellar nurseries close to the galactic centre are being hammered by solar winds from supermassive stars in the region. Current models cannot account entirely for how the stars were able to condense at all under such conditions. (You wouldn't expect fog patches to form in gale force 9 winds for the same reason. If you see fog in such conditions, then there's some extremely freaky condition to explain it - a total lack of air currents or turbulence is possible if you've exactly the right environment, and therefore something similar must exist in these freak star formations. It's an addition to, though, rather than a replacement of existing models.)

Goatse has scarred me

[regular_guy]

That's the first image that immediately came to mind when I saw this picture. Not the awesomeness of the universe, but someone's bum. Tragic.

Re:Goatse has scarred me

[Lyrata]

I saw an angel, and now I wonder if I'm one of those crazies who sees Jesus in toast.

Re:Goatse has scarred me

[SirGarlon]

You're only crazy if you see Jesus in toast and think it's not a coincidence.

Re:Goatse has scarred me

[Nidi62]

I saw an angel, and now I wonder if I'm one of those crazies who sees Jesus in toast.

Don't get too worried until toast Jesus starts talking to you.

Re:Goatse has scarred me

[rubycodez]

is a bonner someone who makes bonnets? I myself saw a giant boner under that mighty cosmic nut sack, but I won't admit to it lest someone think I'm gay.

Re:Goatse has scarred me

[Maritz]

Partly chance, also pareidolia. The brain is very good at picking out patterns, regardless of whether they're really there.

They don't really look like that, do they?

[mark-t]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but it's my understanding that the colorful photos that you see from the Hubble are only pretty because it's been 'shopped like nobody's business. Sure what you're seeing is really out there, but it doesn't actually look like that... and if you were to be at a point in space such that your normal field of vision only envelops roughly the same area as what the photo contains, you would surely see similarities... probably enough to even make a strong connection between them... but not the vibrant colors that space photos so often contain. It is like the difference between a decorated christmas tree, and a decorated christmas tree with many hundreds of lights.

Re:They don't really look like that, do they?

[Almonday]

To continue the christmas tree analogy, what Hubble does for our eyes is a little like what some enterprising pixel-slinger might do for a person with some form of color blindness; sure, the viewer might not be able to distinguish between red and green (or blue and yellow) lights on the tree, but they can still be rendered using the available spectrum into something which conveys the beauty and complexity of the overall display.

Re:They don't really look like that, do they?

[mark-t]

That's more or less my understanding. The hubble sees far more of the EM spectrum than we can with our own eyes... and so they take the invisible frequencies and assign them to colors in the visible spectrum to produce a visually pleasing image, whereas if you were to actually see it with your own eyes, instead of the vibrant colors that you saw in the photo, it would probably look very dull and grey.

Re:They don't really look like that, do they?

[Tastecicles]

It's pictures that stunning that can tell us a hell of a lot about an object. An amazing amount of detail is in the colours, however assigned. The same can be said for radio images, where colours are assigned to relative frequencies in the image field - giving images like this shot of Messier 51 in hydrogen. Might just look like a blue blob to some but it tells a lot about the distribution of hydrogen we would otherwise miss - and assume it's uniformly spread relative to the density of stars in the cloud, which it clearly isn't. There are cool areas of hydrogen in there that don't correspond to any normal-light visible feature (ie it isn't trapped inside stars!).

Re:They don't really look like that, do they?

[Fluffeh]

There is a great video on the Hubble site that you can view that goes into exactly what goes into a hubble picture and explains the whole concept of colors and the like in it.

Re:photoshop color contrast enhancement ?

[ackthpt]

Nah, NASA wouldn't do anything that sleazy.....
http://io9.com/5659951/nasa-caught-photoshopping-an-image-of-saturns-moons-what-were-they-trying-to-hide
http://news.discovery.com/space/nasa-conspiracy-image-processing.html

This is why you can find good deals on great astronomy equipment - also some cheap astronomy equipment, too...

People see these "color enhanced" or "artist's impression" pictures and go buy a telescope, eye-pieces, etc. Then go out on a clear night and besides Juper and Saturn, which are pretty cool to look at, are unimpressed with all the little brown-smudgies in the sky, which are most of what Hubble & Co. make such beautiful images out of.

Re:alternately

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, fuck off, you goddamned political hack. We were having a fun time making nerdy jokes about something as both grandiose and beautiful as the forming of a fucking star , and you have to bring your bullshit politics into it.

Seriously, do people like you ever relax? Ever joke around without dragging The Other Team into it? Do you realize you're the problem with the world, America in particular?

No, I don't really want to argue this with you. Nobody does. Nobody cares about you. So just sit your ass down, shut the fuck up, and enjoy the star being formed already.

The videos are amazing

[Rashdot]

Especially the 3D video:

ahref=http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/38/video/rel=url2html-24467http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2011/38/video/>

Been there, the photo doesnt do it justice.

[TiggertheMad]

the problem is that it presents an image that doesn't reflect what people expect when they see a photo - which is a duplicate of what they would see if they could see it with their own eyes.

Yes, I hate it when I am flying through the galactic core, and I notice a super nova that I have a poster of, and I am like, OMFG, they totally shopped that photo.

I am pretty sure nobody is going to be looking at this object with 'their own eyes' for a very long time, if ever.

Re:yuck

[Tastecicles]

that's not lens flare, that is a common artefact in Cassegrain cameras because the secondary mirror is usually held in place by wires, which introduce diffraction patterns in the image. I'm still disappointed that they didn't use a glass plate* to hold the secondary but there again that would kill a lot of bandwidth for detection, so I can understand the decision to use wire.

*I have some camera lenses which are basically small Schmidt reflectors; they have secondaries held in place by corrective lens optics which reduce common mirror artefacts such as astigmatism, blooming, etc. I would use these as portable scopes but I don't have a full-frame DSLR body to hand... any donations greatly appreciated ;) and if anyone has an Olympus OM digital back with at least 16MP true resolution they'd like to just, like, give away, I'll have your babies!