The latest image released from the Hubble Space Telescope is just out of the light.
Only look busy with it. The mere audacity. The absolute cheek thereof.
Here you were just doing your own everyday business, and then Hubble had to come along and remind you that our universe is giggling, baffling, sickly beautiful.
What you’re looking at is a nebula in the constellation Gemini, about 4,900 light-years away. It is called AFGL 5180, and is part of an extensive molecular cloud complex called Gem OB1.
Such thick molecular clouds are where stars are born, and AFLG 5180 is no exception. It is spectacularly illuminated from within by a very young, hot star that greatly disturbs the space around it as it grows, cutting out large cavities in the gas cloud.
To make a baby star, you need to start with a dense lump in a cloud of cool molecular gas. If this cluster collapses under its own gravity, it will begin to form a star. As the protostar begins to rotate, the material in the cloud forms around a disk that washes into the growing star, relentlessly attracted by its amplifying gravity.
(ESA / Hubble & NASA; JC Tan; R. Fedriani; Judy Schmidt)
If you look closely, you can see two beams going out from behind a fold in the cloud, top right and bottom left in the image. This is one way we know the star is growing. As material is drawn into the star, it begins to interact with the complex magnetic field, producing powerful plasma rays that shoot along the axis of rotation.
These rays last just as long as material falls on the star, so as soon as the star stops growing, the rays will die.
In fact, radiators are one of the mechanisms that prevent the star from growing ridiculously large: they repel material near the star and take it out of reach of gravity. Star winds, as soon as the thermonuclear fusion in the star’s nucleus ignite, also push away material.
What is left of the disk, once the star has grown, will collapse to form planets and asteroids and other objects of the planetary system.
We look at clouds like AFLG 5180 to learn more about these processes, but it can be a bit tricky. The dusty clouds are very thick, which makes it difficult to see what is happening inside.
This is where instruments like Hubble come in handy: in addition to visible light, the Wide Field Camera 3 can also see in infrared, penetrating the dust and revealing the sparkling treasure of young stars inside.
And with these images you can of course take a moment out of your day to reflect in wonder on how wonderful a universe we live.
If you would like to download this image as wallpaper, you can find it on the Hubble Web site.