Our Galactic Family
Birth of 'Impossible' Star
This galactic bubble is known as RCW 120. It lies about 4300 light-years away and has been formed by a star at its center. The star is not visible at these infrared wavelengths but pushes on the surrounding dust and gas with nothing more than the power of its starlight.
Birth of 'Impossible' Star Seen by European Space Telescope By SPACE.com Staffposted: 06 May 201002:33 pm ET New cosmic observations from the European-built Herschel infrared space observatory have revealed previously hidden details of star form tucked away in distant galaxies. One snapshot reveals what researchers called an 'impossible' star caught in the act of forming. The new images show thousands of these galaxies and beautiful star-forming clouds draped across the Milky Way. These images were part of the presentation of the first results from Herschel, which was launched on May 14 of last year, today during a major scientific symposium held at the European Space Agency (ESA), which runs the observatory, in Noordwijk, Netherlands. These results challenge old ideas of star birth, and open new roads for future research. 'Impossible' star In a statement, European scientists said Herschel has discovered an "impossible" star so massive it would dwarf our own sun, but they are perplexed as to how it came to be. Herschel found the embryonic star in the star-forming cloud RCW 120. The newborn star looks set to turn into one of the biggest and brightest stars in our galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years. It already contains eight to 10 times the mass of the sun and is still surrounded by an additional 2000 solar masses of gas and dust from which it can feed further. "This star can only grow bigger," said Annie Zavagno, of the Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille in France. Massive stars are rare and short-lived. To catch one during formation presents a golden opportunity to solve a long-standing paradox in astronomy. "According to our current understanding, you should not be able to form stars larger than eight solar masses," Zavagno said. This is because the fierce light emitted by such large stars should blast away their birth clouds before any more mass can accumulate. But somehow they do form. Many of these "impossible" stars are already known, some containing up to 150 solar masses, but now that Herschel has seen one near the beginning of its life, astronomers can use the data to investigate how it is defying their theories. ............................................................................................
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