Image Cache: Welcome to the Universe, IRAS 14568-6304. There’s no catchy name for this particular stellar object, because it’s too new to have been given one.
Browse through the cool photos, animations and diagrams in Gizmodo’s Image Cache here.
This image from the European Space Agency shows a young star, shrouded by a golden veil of light. Eventually, the gas it’s ejecting — at speeds far in excess of the speed of sound — will burn through the cloud of dust and gas, revealing the star in all its glory. Maybe by then it will have a name.
The star, which is at least 2280 light-years away, was photographed by the Hubble Space Telescope in visible and infrared light. There are other new stars in the vicinity — known as the Circinus molecular cloud complex — too. In the coming centuries, they will form a bight constellation of their own that people on Earth will gaze up at in wonder.