Fact Sheet
Baby Stars
An image taken using Hubble’s Near-Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) appears to confirm the “triggered” formation theory of star birth. According to the theory, high-speed particles from a large star compress surrounding gas and dust enough to create smaller nearby stars. In the example observed by Hubble (right), six small, young Sun-like stars lie within one light-year of the massive star NGC 2264 IRS, which is 2,000 times brighter than the Sun. “We’ve never seen newborne stars this close together,” said Rodger Thompson, a Hubble NICMOS researcher at the University of Arizona. (STScI)
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