Birth of a Star Witnessed

Astronomers have glimpsed the birth of possibly the youngest known star, giving insight into early stages of star formation.
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Birth of a Star Witnessed
STAR BIRTH: Astronomers caught a glimpse of a future star just as it is being born out of the surrounding gas and dust, in a star-forming region similar to the one pictured above. (A. Marston (ESTEC/ESA) et al., JPL, Caltech, NASA )
6/23/2010
Updated:
10/1/2015
<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/dr21b_spitzer.jpg" alt="STAR BIRTH: Astronomers caught a glimpse of a future star just as it is being born out of the surrounding gas and dust, in a star-forming region similar to the one pictured above. (A. Marston (ESTEC/ESA) et al., JPL, Caltech, NASA )" title="STAR BIRTH: Astronomers caught a glimpse of a future star just as it is being born out of the surrounding gas and dust, in a star-forming region similar to the one pictured above. (A. Marston (ESTEC/ESA) et al., JPL, Caltech, NASA )" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1818224"/></a>
STAR BIRTH: Astronomers caught a glimpse of a future star just as it is being born out of the surrounding gas and dust, in a star-forming region similar to the one pictured above. (A. Marston (ESTEC/ESA) et al., JPL, Caltech, NASA )
Astronomers have glimpsed the birth of possibly the youngest known star, giving them an insight into the earliest stages of star formation, according to a recent study published in the Astrophysical Journal.

The object, which has just begun pulling in matter from the surrounding cloud of gas and dust to form its dense, hot core, was spotted in the Perseus star-forming region in our Milky Way galaxy, about 800 light-years away.

The future star, L1448-IRS2E, is less than one-tenth as bright as the sun, and was detected only by the faint light emitted by the surrounding dust cloud, said the U.S. and German researchers.