About 1400 light-years from Earth, in the constellation of Vela, a new star is being born in a burst of violent glory. Streams of carbon monoxide molecules are spewing from the star’s poles, as dust swirls around the entire event. Thank God somebody got the whole event on camera.
The Atacama Large Millimetre/sub-Millimetre Array (ALMA) in northern Chile has been watching the birth of a star and just released a video putting everything into perspective of the larger Milky Way galaxy. It’s one of the first events to showcase the young telescope which is supposed to revolutionise research into star formation. It’s a spectacular, sometimes violent pursuit. Those jets, for instance, are known as Herbig-Haro Objects. Pretty as they are, you don’t want to go anywhere near them. They clock in at about a million miles an hour. [Physics Buzz]