Light from the Dark
T-Tauri stars are pre-main sequence stars, baby stars if you like, that have not yet reached the point of fusion of hydrogen, but gravitational collapse is occurring and drawing these stars towards core fusion. They are very frequently found around dark molecular clouds, material dense enough to block light from behind, and to create these stars.
Even at this tender age, usually below 10-100 million years old, planetary systems can already be formed.
Our own Sun would have come through this stage, being less than 3 solar masses (the limit of most T-Tauri stars).
They can also eject huge amounts of matter along their polar regions, creating a Herbig Haro object.
Most of these stars are orange to red in colour, as they are much larger in size, although gravity is slowly crushing them down, the extra size, like a red giant, drops the temperature, but it does also increase the brightness.
The brightest T-Tauri in our night sky is V773 Tauri (pictured above), but you'll need a good telescope to spot it, as it's Mag 10.68
