Protostar tagged posts

Young stars and nebulosity in Chamaeleon, a constellation visible predominantly in the southern sky. A new study of young (T-Tauri) stars in this region has determined their ages as being between about five – six million years old, as well as determining other properties. Credit: FORS Team, 8.2-meter VLT Antu, ESO

A newborn star typically goes through 4 stages of adolescence. It begins life as a protostar still enshrouded in its natal molecular cloud, accreting new material and developing a proto-planetary disc. Slowly, stellar winds and radiation blow away the surrounding shell of gas and dust, and the third stage, when the surrounding envelope has cleared, is called the T-Tauri phase...

Magnetic field lines (purple) are twisted as they are dragged inward toward a swirling, dusty disk surrounding a young star in this artist’s conception. CREDIT: Bill Saxton, NRAO/AUI/NSF.

Using new images with unprecedented detail, scientists have found material rotating around a very young protostar probably has dragged in and twisted magnetic fields from the larger area surrounding the star. The discovery, made with the Very Large Array VLA) radio telescope, has important implications for how dusty disks – the raw material for planet formation – grow around young stars.

The scientists studied a young protostar 750 light-years from Earth in constellation Perseus...

Herbig-Haro Jet HH 24. Credit: NASA and ESA

Just in time for the release of the movie “Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens,” NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has photographed what looks like a cosmic, double-bladed lightsaber. In the center of the image, partially obscured by a dark, Jedi-like cloak of dust, a newborn star shoots twin jets out into space as a sort of birth announcement to the universe. It does not lie in a galaxy far, far away, but inside our Milky Way. It’s inside a turbulent birthing ground for new stars known as the Orion B molecular cloud complex,1,350 light-years away.

When stars form within giant clouds of cool molecular hydrogen, some of the surrounding material collapses under gravity to form a rotating, flattened disk encircling the newborn star...