Protostar tagged posts

Protostars can Siphon Material from Far Away, says study

Protostars can siphon material from far away
This artist’s conception shows a newly formed protostar surrounded by a swirling protoplanetary disk of dust and gas. Credit: University of Copenhagen/Lars Buchhave

When stars are born, they do it inside a molecular cloud. Astronomers long assumed that the “crèche” supplied all the nutrients that protostars needed to form. However, it turns out they get help from outside the nest.

A new study published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics by scientists at the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics delved into the role of streamers and filaments in the star-birth process. Think of them as channels that extend out from the interior of the stellar creche, sometimes out as far as 10,000 astronomical units (about 0.15 light-years)...

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NASA’s Webb catches Fiery Hourglass as New Star Forms

The protostar within the dark cloud L1527, shown in this image from NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is embedded within a cloud of material feeding its growth. Ejections from the star have cleared out cavities above and below it, whose boundaries glow orange and blue in this infrared view. The upper central region displays bubble-like shapes due to stellar “burps,” or sporadic ejections.
Credits: NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI. Image processing: J. DePasquale, A. Pagan, and A. Koekemoer (STScI)

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has revealed the once-hidden features of the protostar within the dark cloud L1527, providing insight into the beginnings of a new star...

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Astrophysics: A direct view of Star/Disk Interactions

Artist’s impression of the streams of hot gas that build up stars. Matter from the surrounding protoplanetary disk, the birthplace of planets, is channeled onto the stellar surface by magnetic fields shocking the surface at supersonic velocity (Copyright: Mark A. Garlick).

A team including researchers from the Institute for Astrophysics of the University of Cologne has for the first time directly observed the columns of matter that build up newborn stars. This was observed in the young star TW Hydrae system located approximately 163 light years from Earth. This result was obtained with the Very Large Telescope Interferometer (VLTI) and its GRAVITY instrument of the European Southern Observatory (ESO) in Chile...

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ALMA reveals Inner Web of Stellar Nursery

This spectacular and unusual image shows part of the famous Orion Nebula, a star formation region lying about 1350 light-years from Earth. It combines a mosaic of millimetre wavelength images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the IRAM 30-metre telescope, shown in red, with a more familiar infrared view from the HAWK-I instrument on ESO's Very Large Telescope, shown in blue. The group of bright blue-white stars at the left is the Trapezium Cluster -- made up of hot young stars that are only a few million years old. Credit: ESO/H. Drass/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/A. Hacar

This spectacular and unusual image shows part of the famous Orion Nebula, a star formation region lying about 1350 light-years from Earth. It combines a mosaic of millimetre wavelength images from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) and the IRAM 30-metre telescope, shown in red, with a more familiar infrared view from the HAWK-I instrument on ESO’s Very Large Telescope, shown in blue. The group of bright blue-white stars at the left is the Trapezium Cluster — made up of hot young stars that are only a few million years old. Credit: ESO/H. Drass/ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/A. Hacar

New data from the ALMA and other telescopes have been used to create this stunning image showing a web of filaments in the Orion Nebula...

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