Protostars

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At center right is a compact star cluster composed of luminous red, blue, and white points of light. Faint jets with clumpy, diffuse material extend in various directions from the bright cluster. Above and to the right is a smaller cluster of stars. Translucent red wisps of material stretch across the scene, though there are patches and a noticeable gap in the top left corner that reveal the black background of space. Background galaxies are scattered across this swath of space, appearing as small blue-white and orange-white dots or fuzzy, thin disks. There are two noticeably larger points, foreground stars, with diffraction spikes: an orange-white point on the left, and a blue-white point in the top right.

NASA’s Webb Peers into the Extreme Outer Galaxy

5 min read

Astronomers have directed NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope to examine the outskirts of our Milky Way galaxy. Scientists call this…

Article4 months ago
A growing protostar embedded within a molecular cloud. The center of the image shows a bright, red region, where the growing protostar resides, with a thin, gray lane of matter cutting through it horizontally, which is the protostar’s accretion disk. Above and below this region are blue triangular-shaped molecular clouds, which give the overall object an hourglass shape. The areas in the molecular clouds closest to the protostar have more pronounced plumes of blue gas. There are red, yellow, orange, blue, and green stars and galaxies scattered across the background.

NASA’s Webb Captures Celestial Fireworks Around Forming Star

4 min read

The colors within this mid-infrared image reveal details about the central protostar’s behavior. The cosmos seems to come alive with…

Article6 months ago
Clouds of gas and dust with many stars. The clouds form a flat, blue background toward the bottom, and become thicker and smokier toward the top. Stars on one side light the nebula. A thick arc of gas and dust reaches around from the bottom-right corner of the image toward the top-left corner. It begins as a dark and obscuring cloud at bottom right and gradually becomes brightly lit by many stars at the upper left. Other large, foreground stars lie between the nebula and the viewer.

Hubble Captures Infant Stars Transforming a Nebula

2 min read

This NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope image presents a visually striking collection of interstellar gas and dust. Named RCW 7, the…

Article6 months ago
A dark cloud of gas and dust sits along the top half of the image. The cloud is illuminated by a bright-white star below it and just to the right of image center. Another bright object, looking like a bright, vertical disk bisected by a dark cloud, sits just to the right of the main cloud and above and to the right of the bright-white star. A jet of bright, turquoise light streams to the left and right from each side of the vertical disk-like object. A section of the jet, to the left, appears to be hidden behind the dark cloud, but emerges from the cloud left of image center. The background is black with rusty hues near the bright-white star.

Hubble Sees New Star Proclaiming Presence with Cosmic Lightshow

3 min read

Jets emerge from the cocoon of a newly forming star to blast across space, slicing through the gas and dust…

Article9 months ago
An image of a region of a molecular cloud. The orange cloud is dense and bright close to the top of the image, like rolling clouds, and grows darker and more wispy toward the bottom and in the top corner. One bright star with six short diffraction spikes and several dimmer stars are visible as light spots among the clouds.

Cheers! NASA’s Webb Finds Ethanol, Other Icy Ingredients for Worlds

5 min read

Editor’s Note: This article was updated March 13, 2024, to clarify the likelihood that chemicals found around IRAS 2A were…

Article10 months ago
A nebula with stars. The center of the image from top-left to bottom-right glows brightly with the light of newly forming stars and is partially obscured by dark dust. Colored layers of gas and dust billow out across the rest of the image. Foreground stars with large diffraction spikes speckle the nebula.

Hubble Views a Massive Star Forming

2 min read

This image from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope is teeming with color and activity. It features a relatively close star-forming…

Article11 months ago

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