newborn stars tagged posts

An international team of astronomers used two of the most powerful radio telescopes in the world to create more than three hundred images of planet-forming disks around very young stars in the Orion Clouds. These images reveal new details about the birthplaces of planets and the earliest stages of star formation.

Most of the stars in the universe are accompanied by planets. These planets are born in rings of dust and gas, called protoplanetary disks. Even very young stars are surrounded by these disks. Astronomers want to know exactly when these disks start to form, and what they look like. But young stars are very faint, and there are dense clouds of dust and gas surrounding them in stellar nurseries...

Interstellar filaments in Polaris Copyright ESA and the SPIRE & PACS consortia, Ph. André (CEA Saclay) for the Gould’s Belt Survey Key Programme Consortium, and A. Abergel (IAS Orsay) for the Evolution of Interstellar Dust Key Programme Consortium

Just as the new calendar year begins, and with it a feeling of new beginnings, so this network of dust and gas shows a portion of sky where star birth is yet to take hold. This region is in Polaris, 490 light-years away. It was imaged by ESA’s Herschel space observatory in 2011; a colour composite is presented here. It shows several tens of tangled interstellar filaments. Such filaments can stretch for tens of light-years through space and can precede the onset of star formation, with newborn stars often found in the densest parts.

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