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Kate Wong Scientific American
Like
human newborns who keep their parents up all night, stellar
infants can bend the parental gas cloud to their will. According
to new observations from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope
of a star-forming region in a nearby galaxy known as the
Large Magellanic Cloud, intense radiation and powerful winds
from massive, ultrabright baby stars have sculpted their
environment, carving a large cavity in their natal nebula,
N83B.
In the
image at right, these massive stars are seen just as they
emerge from the gaseous womb. (The opportunity for such
observations is rare because the weighty newborns mature
quickly and spend much of their youth hidden by dust.) Of
particular interest is a star at the center of the nebula,
just below the brightest region, whose intense light and
furious winds appear to have driven out the local gas, forming
a spherical void perhaps only 30,000 years ago—quite
recent, by astronomical standards. Neighboring stars in
the nebula—including one 45 times more massive than
the sun—are younger. The central star’s fierce
wind may have triggered their formation.
So far,
about 20 bright young stars have been detected in N83B.
But others may well exist both there and elsewhere in the
Large Magellanic Cloud, kicking and screaming behind a veil
of cosmic dust.
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