The latest image released with the Hubble Space Telescope is really just past the pale.
Only look on the. The pure dareThe absolute cheek of it.
Here you were, just doing your own everyday business, and then Hubble had to come over and remind you that our universe is overwhelming, astonishing, sickeningly beautiful.
What you are looking at is a nebula about 4,900 light-years away in the constellation of Gemini. It’s called AFGL 5180 and it’s part of a huge molecular cloud complex called Gem OB1.
Such thick molecular clouds are where stars are born, and AFLG 5180 is no exception. It is spectacularly lit from within by a very young, hot star that violently disrupts the space around it as it grows, carving out huge voids in the gas cloud.
To make a baby star, you have to start with a dense mass in a cloud of cool molecular gas. When this clump collapses under its own gravity, it will form a star. As that protostar begins to spin, the material in the cloud around it forms a disc, which washes into the growing star, drawn inexorably by its amplifying gravity.
(ESA / Hubble & NASA; JC Tan; R. Fedriani; Judy Schmidt)
If you look closely, you can see two rays from behind a fold in the cloud, to the top right and bottom left corner of the image. This is one way we know the star is growing. As material is pulled towards the star, it begins to interact with the complex magnetic field and produce powerful plasma jets that shoot along the axis of rotation.
These jets last only as long as material falls on the star, so once the star stops growing, the jets will die.
In fact, jets are one of the mechanisms that keep the star from growing ridiculously large – they push material away from the star and take it out of the reach of gravity. Stellar winds, once thermonuclear fusion ignites in the star’s core, also push material away.
What remains of the disk, when the star has finished growing, will clump together to form planets and asteroids and other planetary system objects.
We look to clouds like AFLG 5180 to learn more about these processes, but it can be a bit tricky. The dusty clouds are very thick, making it difficult to see what’s going on inside.
That’s where instruments like Hubble come in handy: In addition to visible light, the Wide Field Camera 3 can also see infrared, which penetrates the dust and reveals the sparkling treasure of young stars within.
And of course, these images let you take a moment of your day to reflect in wonder at how wonderful a universe we live.
If you want to download this image to use as a wallpaper, you can find it on the Hubble website.