2 telescopes join to pull back the veil on a star being born

Two telescopes have been used in tandem to provide an image of a star being born, something previously invisible to human eyes, U.S. astronomers say. The infrared "eyes" of the Spitzer space telescope and sub-millimeter wavelengths of light captured by the newly completed Large Millimeter/sub-millimeter Array in Chile have given new insights into stellar birth in images of a well-studied object known as HH 46/47, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., reported Monday. HH 46/47 is an example of a Herbig-Haro object, formed by jets shot out from the newborn star colliding with surrounding material, producing small, bright, nebulous regions, scientists at the laboratory said. The observations show twin supersonic jets emanating from the central star that blast away surrounding gas and cause it to glow in two bubbly lobes. "Young stars like our sun need to remove some of the gas collapsing in on them to become stable, and HH 46/47 is an excellent laboratory for studying this outflow process," said Alberto Noriega-Crespo of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "Thanks to Spitzer, the HH 46/47 outflow is considered one of the best examples of a jet being present with an expanding bubble-like structure." Additional observations HH 46/47 by ALMA have revealed that the gas in the lobes is expanding faster than previously thought, the astronomers said.