A ‘GHOSTLY’ image captured by Nasa shows a stunning view of a “stellar nursery” where stars are born.
The haunting pic reveals a star-forming cloud called Lupus 3, located hundreds of lightyears away.
It was captured by Nasa‘s Hubble Space Telescope, revealing the early moments of new stars.
“While this eerie NASA Hubble Space Telescope image may look ghostly, it’s actually full of new life,” said Nasa’s Monika Luabeya.
“Lupus 3 is a star-forming cloud about 500 light-years away in the constellation Scorpius.”
The pic shows bright T Tauri stars, which are effectively “teenagers“.
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They haven’t begun the stable nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium we’d associate with an adult star.
“White wisps of gas swirl throughout the region, and in the lower-left corner resides a dark dust cloud,” Monika explained.
“Bright T Tauri stars shine at the left, bottom right, and upper center, while other young stellar objects dot the image.”
These particular stars are at a stage the “enveloping gas and dust” dissipates.
This can either happen from radiation and stellar winds, or by particles flowing out from the emerging star.
T Tauri stars are usually less than 10 million years old. For comparison, our Sun is believed to be 4.6 billion years old.
And they’ll usually vary in brightness, which might be because of instability in the disc of matter surrounding the star.
This disc is where you’d eventually expect planets to form.
It can also be caused by material from the disc falling onto the star and being gobbled up.
And flares on the star’s surface can also affect the brightness.
LUPUS 3 – NASA’S NEW PIC IN BRIEF
Here’s what you need to know about the latest Nasa Hubble pic…
Object type: Star-forming cloud (dark nebula)
Location: Constellation Scorpius
Distance from Earth: Approximately 500 light-years
Primary star type: T Tauri (pre-main-sequence)
Age of T Tauri stars: Usually less than 10 million years
Power source: Gravitational contraction (unlike nuclear fusion in adult stars)
Solar comparison: Our Sun is 4.6 billion years old
Telescope: NASA Hubble Space Telescope
Key features: White gas wisps, dark dust clouds, and emerging “teenager” stars
Our Sun burns hydrogen into helium through a nuclear fusion process.
But T Tauri stars are powered by a process called gravitational contraction.
That’s when the gravity of the star pulls its matter ever tighter towards the centre, releasing heat and light.
T Tauri stars are interesting because they act as a kind of “time machine” for scientists.
HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE – WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW
Here’s what you need to know about one of the world’s most iconic space probes…
- The Hubble Space Telescope is a telescope that captures images while in space
- It was launched into a low-Earth orbit in 1990 and is still fully operational (although it’s now in a single-gyroscope mode)
- The advantage of Hubble is that it takes photos from outside of Earth’s atmosphere
- This means distortion from the atmosphere is removed, allowing for more accurate image capture
- Nasa’s Hubble has captured some of most detailed images of space ever recorded
- The Hubble telescope was also able to accurately determine the rate at which the universe was expanding
- Hubble is also the only telescope that was designed to be serviced by astronauts in space
- Five different missions have been launched to repair, upgrade or replace parts of the Hubble telescope
- It’s believed that the Hubble telescope could continue working into the 2030s
- But its successor – the James Webb Space Telescope – already launched in December 2021
We can only see our own Sun as it currently is, but looking for younger stars out in space lets us see how they form and grow up.
In fact, our own Sun would’ve once been a T Tauri star.
“T Tauri stars are in the process of contracting under the force of gravity as they become main sequence stars which fuse hydrogen to helium in their cores,” Monika said.
“Studying these stars can help astronomers better understand the star formation process.”
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