A new star is born every year in our galaxy. New year, new star — that's the average. From wombs of dark, cold dust and gas, these overwhelmingly big and dazzling orbs burst forth to light up the Milky Way.
Breathtaking portraits of blooming stars in their strange nurseries have proved to be a specialty of the Hubble Space Telescope, orbiting high above the planet Earth. Among the most stunning so far is a picture of a star cluster called, unprettily, NGC 3603.
In this one shot, the telescope captured three stages in star gestation, as well as a violent gang of middle-aged stars, and one oldster, on the brink of catastrophic death. The picture was an accident, naturally.
"That star with the ring, that's what we wanted a picture of," laughs You-Hua Chu, a University of Illinois astronomer on the team that requested the photo. The team aimed for star death, and got the whole life story.
Oddly, the story of our own humble star, our sun, could never unfold in this particular nursery, which is dominated by violent giants. "Oh, no, no, no. No solar system. It's too stormy," says Chu. "Maybe in the darkest corner ... No," she concludes, "it would be hard."
In spite of the storm, however, stars are gestating in the giant galactic nebula NGC 3603. One safe spot is towering pillars of gas that have withstood the star cluster's gale of radiation, a byproduct of the nuclear fusion that makes stars shine. While the storm rages outside, deep inside the pillars, gas and dust may cool and condense into thick clots. These can collapse to form stars.
A second source of new stars in the nebula are dense, onion-layered clouds of gas and dust called Bok globules. If a Bok globule's outer layers of dust manage to shield the interior by absorbing the radiation blizzard, then its protected inner layers can cool to about -441 degrees F. Even as this cooling gas and dust churns at supersonic speed, it settles toward the center, or "centers." One globule can hatch more than one star.
