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.

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

[SirGarlon]

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

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?

[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: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/>

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!