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klesey

Warped Spiral Galaxy ESO 510-13

Image Credit: Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA), C. Conselice (U. Wisconsin/STScI) et al., NASA

itsfullofstars

voyagrtwo

NPR: Hubble Captures Time-Lapse Videos Of Stars Being Born

(Movies of jets from young stars at HubbleSite: here)

itsokaytobesmart

If you’re like me and maybe a little confused as to what you’re looking at, here’s some more detail (Yes, even Joe has to look stuff up sometimes):

As a star is formed from collapsing dust, ever increasing its density and energy, it begins to form a disk of dust and gas pulled in and rotated by its growing gravity. Perpendicular to this disk, like the tip of a spinning top, some gas is ejected away from the growing star in a high-energy jet. As this collides with interstellar gas, it gives off radiation, which we can observe with telescopes like Hubble.

To see the jets, we have to shift into the infrared and other spectra, as the radiation is outside normal human vision. These movies represent the first time we’ve seen the dynamics of the jets as opposed to still images. More info on protostellar jets here, you star-freaks.