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If you've been a reader of this site for long, you probably wondered when I'd get to starbirth in this list of seven cosmic wonders. Wait no longer—here it is!
The Pillars of Creation, as seen through Hubble Space Telescope. Here, young stars are forming inside cocoons of gas and dust; someday they'll eat their way out, lighting up more of the cloud that gave them birth.
Starbirth is one of the great recycling mechanisms of the cosmos. It takes material that is floating around in interstellar space and, under the right conditions, coalesces that material into a star. The process is incredibly long compared to human life spans. Our own star began forming some 4.6 billion years ago. It will live for another 5 billion years and eventually evolve to a white dwarf star. Before it does, the Sun will swell up to become a giant star, shed most of its mass, and then slowly cool and shrink. All that material that it sheds will populate the interstellar medium, perhaps becoming part of new stars in the distant future. Supernova explosions also return elements to space, and those too will become part of new stars and planets.
NGC 1333, a cluster of stars being born more than 1,000 light-years away. They are still embedded in the cloud of gas that gave them birth. Left, from Spitzer Space Telescope. Spitzer is able to see through the cloud of gas surrounding these stars to see the cluster hidden within. At right is visible-light view of the same cluster.
Regions of starbirth are nearly everywhere we look in our own galaxy and in countless other galaxies, too. Astronomers study them in just about every wavelength of light possible, although infrared-enabled observatories and instruments have the best chance of peeking into the stellar creches to watch the process of stars being born.
The Orion Nebula, as seen by Hubble Space Telescope. Hundreds of young stars are forming here, along with dozens of brown dwarfs, objects too cool to be stars and too hot to be planets.
The closest starbirth region that most of us have heard about is the Orion Nebula, some 1,500 light-years away in the constellation Orion. If you look closely at a blow-up of this image, you'll see swirls of clouds, and what look like jets emanating from some of the new stars. Newborn stars are chaotic, and they sculpt their birth nests as they form. They also light up their surroundings, creating reflection nebulae—clouds of gas and dust that glow in the reflected light. However, those clouds also give off infrared light because they're being heated by the nearby stars. So, I give you a glimpse into the mysterious realms of starbirth, a process that is itself one of the seven wonders of the universe.
A week or so back, after the AAS meeting ended, we went to the Big Island of Hawai'i for some site visits to observatories (I had a few clients to meet with) and a chance to do a little hiking during our free time. The major hike was across a few miles of lava flows that have been successively laid down over the past decade or so from the Pu'u O'o vent on the flanks of Kiluaea volcano. I've done the lava study field trip a couple of times, and Mr. SpaceMusic and I have hiked older flows together, but he had never been "up close and personal" with a lava flow before. So, we contacted a colleague of mine from the old Sky & Telescope days, Stephen James O'Meara, who is a volcano expert (in addition to being a world-class amateur astronomer). He agreed to take a group of us out on the flows for a day. So, we prepped (lots of water, food, safe clothing, first-aid kit, did I mention water?) and met up with him for a lava jaunt.
It was amazing. There's nothing that can prepare you for an encounter with fresh flowing lava, unless, by chance, you spend your life next to 1200-degree (F) ovens all day. Even then, you can step away from an oven. Lava, not so much.
In hiking across this flow we encountered many "breakouts" of lava, basically bubbling up and through rock that had been laid down perhaps a few hours up to a few days earlier. It was moving pretty slowly, so there was time to step out of the way, or even walk up to it and study its motion. As dangerous as it can be to encounter, lava is also a mesmerizing thing to watch. And, it is one of the few ways we can experience one of the main forces that shape our planet and have done so since Earth began to form around 4.5 billion years ago.
Lava glowing from the rocks at rock overhang near Kalapana, Big Island. (Copyright 2007, Carolyn Collins Petersen)
The lava flowing from this volcano is called basalt, and it comes from the melting of Earth's mantle, deep beneath the crust on which we walk. It contains a number of minerals, all made up of elements that we can trace back to the elements that made up our planet during solar system formation. Where did those elements come from? Many came from the explosions of ancient supernovae (massive stars that die catastrophic deaths). So, in some sense, when we were looking at the lava that came flowing from Kilauea, we were looking at (as one our hiking companions said) the last gasp of the death of an ancient star. Taking it one step further, you could say that we were experiencing the latest episode in the formation of our own planet. Or, if you like, think of it as the ongoing effect of star formation, writ small on the surface of our own planet.
Want more info on the Kilauea volcano? Go here or here for lots of FAQ-type questions and answers about it.
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