The Hubble Telescope took snapshots of the infant stars, in an effort to understand how larger stars are formed.
As part of the Sofia Massive Star Formation Survey, which is investigating how massive stars, with more than eight times the mass of the Sun, are formed, NASA’s Hubble Mission team have captured images of ‘infant stars’.
Sometimes called baby stars or protostars, they are covered in a thick dust that blocks light, however, Hubble’s technology is able to detect near-infrared emissions shining through gaps formed by bursts of gas and dust. The resulting radiating energy can provide information in areas such as structure, radiation fields and dust content.
NASA said in a statement, “Researchers look for connections between the properties of these young stars, like outflows, environment, mass, brightness and their evolutionary stage to test massive star formation theories.”
Baby pictures
The below image is of the high-mass star-forming region Cepheus A, which is about 2,400 light-years away in the Cepheus constellation. It hosts a wide array of baby stars, alongside one large and brightly shining protostar, which the NASA team explained accounts for roughly 50pc of the region’s luminosity.
The Cepheus A region. Image: NASA, ESA and R. Fedriani.
“While much of the region is shrouded in opaque dust, light from hidden stars breaks through outflow cavities to illuminate and energise areas of gas and dust, creating pink and white nebulae. The pink area is an HII region, where the intense ultraviolet radiation of the nearby stars has converted the surrounding clouds of gas into glowing, ionised hydrogen.”
“Glittering much closer to home”, the Hubble Space Telescope also caught an image of the star-forming region G033.91+0.11 in our Milky Way galaxy. The light patch in the centre of the image is a reflection nebula, in which light from a hidden protostar bounces off gas and dust.
Star-forming region G033.91+0.11. Image: NASA, ESA, and R Fedriani.
Lastly, the below Hubble image showcases the star-forming region GAL-305.20+00.21. The bright spot is an emission nebula, glowing gas that is ionised by a protostar buried within the larger complex of gas and dust clouds.
A protostar is swathed in the gas of an emission nebula within star-forming region GAL-305.20+00.21. Image: NASA, ESA, and R Fedriani.
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