126.6 - And Another Thing: picture of baby star

And Another Thing: picture of baby star

One last cool thing. In this case, a hot cool thing.

The picture is a baby picture. It's a baby star. A baby star.

The picture was taken by the ALMA telescope in Chile. This is a great place to do this because this telescope is set in the Atacama Desert, which is one of the driest places on Earth. This desert makes the Sahara look like a rain forest. Which also means the air is incredibly clear and crisp because of the lack of humidity. This is wonderful for telescopes.

What the image shows is material streaming from the baby star, which is the bluish area in the center of the cloud, you see all that material being ejected out from the star at incredible speed and as it plows into the surrounding gas and dust, it heats it up and causes it to glow.

These illuminated jets you see are actually spewing out faster than any have ever been measured before. That's one very active baby.

Sources:
http://news.nationalpost.com/2013/08/20/stunning-images-capture-close-up-of-glowing-newborn-star/
http://www.musc.edu/cando/geocam/atacama/atacama.html