When we see pictures of stars, we're used to measuring their age in millions or billions of years. But researchers using the Spitzer Space Telescope now have snapped a rare shot of a developing star system they estimate at just 10,000 years old – a hugely valuable look at the beginning of a star's life.
The picture shown here is taken using infrared light – in visible light spectrum, the star and its surrounding region would be hidden by clouds of dust impenetrable by visible light.
Stars typically form out of "envelopes" of dust and gas, which collapse and begin spinning inward. As the star itself begins taking form, the envelope collapses and flattens, while huge jets of material shoot off above and below the forming disk.
Here you can see the huge jets of gas shooting away from the birthing star, each long enough that light would take about nine months to travel from one end to the other. The white-colored portions are the hottest, at only about 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Most of the jets, in orange, are closer to zero degrees Fahrenheit, the researchers say.
The flattening envelope can be seen perpendicular to the jets. It's dark in the picture, because dust is thick enough there to trap even infrared light. The entire envelope is big enough to hold tens of thousands of solar systems, while the potentially planet-forming disk is relatively tiny – about the size of a pixel in this photo.
The picture is exciting astronomers, who rarely have a chance to observe the very early years of a star's creation:
The proto-star is located about 800 light-years away, and will likely grow into a regular fiery star like our Sun in a mere million years or so, the researchers said.
Embryonic Star Captured With Jets Flaring [NASA JPL press release]
(Image: Infrared view of embryonic star L1157, as captured by Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UIUC)
