The latest image released from the Hubble Space Telescope is really beyond clarity.
Simply watch to this thing. The absolute audacity. The absolute cheek of this.
Here you were, just considering your own worldly business, and then Hubble had to come and remind you that our Universe is incredibly amazing, incredibly wonderful.
What you are looking for is a nebula about 4,900 light-years away from the constellation of Gemini. It is called AFGL 5180 and is part of a vast complex of molecular clouds called Gem OB1.
These thick molecular clouds are where the 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 and sculpts huge cavities in the gas cloud.
To make a baby star, you need to start with a dense group in a cloud of fresh molecular gas. If this group collapses under its own gravity, it will begin to form a star. As this protostar begins to rotate, the material in the surrounding cloud forms a disk that sinks into the rising star, inexorably dragged by its strong gravitational sinking.
(ESA / Hubble and NASA; JC Tan; R. Fedriani; Judy Schmidt)
If you look closely, you can see two beams emanating from behind a fold in the cloud, towards the top right and bottom left of the image. This is a way of knowing that the star is growing. As the material moves toward the star, it begins to interact with the complex magnetic field, producing powerful plasma jets that fire along the axis of rotation.
These jets only last as long as the material falls on the star, so once the star stops growing, the planes will die.
In fact, jets are one of the mechanisms that prevent the star from growing ridiculously: they move material close to the star, pulling it out of the reach of gravitational attraction. Stellar winds, once thermonuclear fusion has ignited in the star’s core, also push the material.
What is left of the disk, once the star is finished to grow, will group together to form planets and asteroids and other objects in the planetary system.
We look at clouds like AFLG 5180 for more information on these processes, but it can be a bit tricky. Dusty clouds are very thick, making it difficult to see what is happening inside.
This is where instruments like the Hubble come in handy: in addition to visible light, the wide field camera 3 can see in infrared, penetrating the dust, revealing the sparkling treasure of young stars inside.
And, of course, these images allow you to take a moment of the day to contemplate, amazed, the magnificent universe we live.
If you want to download this image for use as a wallpaper, you can find it on the Hubble website.