Latest Star formation Stories
Vanderbilt -- For the past few months, Bob O'Dell has been mapping the winds blowing in the Orion Nebula, the closest stellar nursery similar to the one in which the sun was born.New data from the Hubble Orion Heritage Program, a major observational effort by the Hubble Space Telescope in 2004 and 2005, have given the Vanderbilt astronomer the information he needs to measure the stellar winds with unprecedented detail, and he reported his early results on Jan. 11 at the annual meeting of the...
NOAO -- New Spitzer Space Telescope observations of an unusual class of interacting binary stars detected excess amounts of infrared radiation, suggesting that these odd objects are surrounded by large disks of cool dust. The results reported today in Washington, DC, at the 207th meeting of the American Astronomical Society (AAS) were produced by one of six teams of professional astronomers and high school teachers participating in a unique program co-sponsored by the Spitzer Science Center...
JPL -- The "Christmas Tree Cluster" has been seen sporting a shiny new decoration: an ornament made of newborn stars! But like a gift-wrapped package, these newborn stars are hiding behind thick branches of cosmic dust, only revealed in this spectacular new image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.Astronomers say this stellar ornament represents the best laboratory to date for studying the physics of star formation. The newly revealed infant stars appear as pink and red specks...
Astronomers Track Massive Shockwaves in Plasma Escaping Newborn Star Like traffic on a freeway, plasma spewing from the poles of newborn stars moves in clumps that travel at different speeds. When fast-moving particles run into slower material on these cosmic freeways, the resulting "traffic jams" create massive shock waves that travel trillions of miles. Thanks to highly resolved images from the Hubble Space Telescope, a team of astronomers have created the first moving pictures of...
Berkeley -- Astrophysicists at the University of California, Berkeley, and Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have exploded one of two competing theories about how stars form inside immense clouds of interstellar gas. Using supercomputer simulations that take into account the turbulence within a cloud collapsing to form a star, the researchers conclude that the "competitive accretion" model cannot explain what astronomers observe of star-forming regions studied to date....
In an upcoming issue, the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics will publish the most complete picture of a "triggered" star-forming region. Induced (or "triggered") star formation is one of the processes that are supposed to lead to the formation of massive stars. Massive stars play a key role in the chemical and dynamical evolution of galaxies. The way massive stars form is still much debated among the astronomers' community: it is currently one of the hottest...
Cambridge, MA -- Hubble's iconic images include many shots of cosmic clouds of gas and dust called nebulae. For example, the famous "Pillars of Creation" mark the birthplace of new stars within the Eagle Nebula. Yet despite their beauty, visible-light images show only the nebulae surfaces. Baby stars may hide beneath, invisible even to Hubble's powerful gaze. Harvard astronomers have pioneered a new way to peer below the surface using near-infrared light that is invisible to the...
Cambridge, MA -- In an exercise that demonstrates the power of a multiwavelength investigation using diverse facilities, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) have deciphered the true nature of a mysterious object hiding inside a dark cosmic cloud. They found that the cloud, once thought to be featureless, contains a baby star, or possibly a failed star known as a "brown dwarf," that is still forming within its dusty cocoon. Observations indicate that...
The supernova remnant N 63A is a member of N 63, a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Visible from the southern hemisphere, the LMC is an irregular galaxy lying 160,000 light-years from our own Milky Way galaxy. The LMC provides excellent examples of active star formation and supernova remnants, many of which have been studied with Hubble. Numerous of the stars in the immediate vicinity of N 63A are extremely massive. It is estimated that the 'mother-star', or...
NASA -- A violent and chaotic-looking mass of gas and dust is seen in this Hubble Space Telescope image of a nearby supernova remnant. Denoted N 63A, the object is the remains of a massive star that exploded, spewing its gaseous layers out into an already turbulent region.The supernova remnant is a member of N 63, a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Visible from the southern hemisphere, the LMC is an irregular galaxy lying 160,000 light-years from our own Milky Way...
Latest Star formation Reference Libraries
T Tauri -- T Tauri stars are a class of stars thought to represent extremely young pre-main sequence stars, in an early stage of life. They are seen near many molecular clouds in our galaxy. The first ones were found in 1945, identified by their optical variability and strong chromospheric lines. T Tauri stars have masses and temperatures similar to the Sun, but are significantly brighter. They have fast rotation rates, typically with a period of a few days, compared to a month for...
Star Formation -- Star formation is the process by which gas in molecular clouds gets transformed into stars. In the current paradigm of star formation, cores of molecular clouds (regions of specially high density) became gravitationally unstable, and start to concentrate. Part of the gravitational energy lost in the process is radiated in the infrared, another part increases the temperature of the core. The accretion of material happen partially though a circumstellar disc. When...
Molecular Cloud -- Molecular clouds are interstellar nebulae that have a density and size sufficient to permit the formation of H2, molecular hydrogen. However, this molecule is difficult to detect, and the molecule most used to trace the H2 is CO (carbon monoxide). The ratio between CO luminosity and H2 mass is roughly constant, although there are reasons to doubt this assumption in observations of some other galaxies. In the Milky Way, molecular clouds account for roughly one-half...
H II Region -- An H II region is an emission nebula associated with hot, young, blue stars, and star forming regions. H II, or singly-ionized hydrogen, is nebular gas ionized by ultraviolet light emitted by these hot, young stars of spectral type O and B. The sizes of H II regions are determined both by the amount of gas present, and by the luminosity of the O and B stars -- the more luminous the stars are, the larger the H II region can be. H II regions are found within the spiral...
Horsehead Nebula -- The Horsehead Nebula, a part of the optical nebula IC434 and also known as Barnard 33, was first recorded in 1888 on a photographic plate taken at the Harvard College Observatory. Its coincidental appearance as the profile of a horse's head and neck has led to its becoming one of the most familiar astronomical objects. It is, in fact, an extremely dense cloud projecting in front of the ionized gas that provides the pink glow so nicely revealed in this picture. We...
![Hubble\](/media/gallery/universe/thumbs/thumbs_iod-universe-042213.jpg "Hubble\")
![Protostar G35 Imagery From the SOFIA\](/media/gallery/sofia-stratospheric-observatory-for-infrared-astronomy/thumbs/thumbs_742079main_protostar_g35_fig_1a_1b_150_full_0.jpg "Protostar G35 Imagery From the SOFIA\")
