#young stellar object

[timbercow]

A sketch of a young stellar object.

[spacettf]

G79.29+0.46 by Judy Schmidt Via Flickr: Close-up of the luminous blue variable candidate star G79.29+0.46 and its associated dusty, red ejecta shells. Also visible is a bright pillar of gas and a dark tendril of thick dust containing numerous young stellar objects. More information and widefield view here: www.flickr.com/photos/geckzilla/28314613744/

[danieland-me-blog]

[starsandspice]

X Marks the Spot

Deep in the Orion Nebula, under heavy clouds of dust, massive stars are forming. One of these is so thickly enshrouded, we can see no optical or infrared light - only the longest radio wavelengths can penetrate the dust. Dr. Lynn Matthews and her colleagues have caught a unique glimpse of this star's formation using the Very Long Baseline Array, a collection of ten radio telescopes that gives us some of the sharpest pictures of our universe. 

This star (marked by the red circle) was born when a gas cloud collapsed, forming a dense core in its center. But that initial collapse was only the beginning. After they're born, stars, like babies, gain weight at an amazing pace. Surrounding gas rushes in, attracted by the newborn's gravity. As the gas swirls inward to feed the star, it forms a thick, dust-covered disk - that's the black diagonal bar you might notice in the center of the video. 

Around the disk is an X of colored lights, each dot a clump of gas flowing away from the star. Somehow, the disk of material feeding the star is driving a wind, blowing some of the inflowing gas back out into interstellar space. The dots are color-coded for direction - red-colored dots move away from us, while blue-colored dots move toward us. (Some of the gas, colored green and yellow, rotates in a bridge connecting the two bottom arms of the X - a peek at the disk itself.)

So how does the wind form? Astronomers are still looking for the answer...but when an X marks the spot, the answer might be a little easier to find!