Astronomers working with the Hubble Telescope have published a new image. It shows part of a stellar nursery in the Taurus cloud.
The object captured in the photo is known as GN 04.32.8. It is a reflection nebula. This is a gas and dust cloud that does not have its own light source. Instead, it is “illuminated” by the light of nearby stars, which hits its dust and scatters. Due to the way it scatters, many reflective nebulae, including GN 04.32.8, appear blue.
GN 04.32.8 is only a small part of the stellar nursery known as the Taurus molecular cloud. Located just 480 light-years from Earth, it is one of the best places to study newborn stars. GN 04.32.8 is illuminated by a system of three bright stars in the center of the image. According to astronomers, they are gravitationally bound to each other, forming a triple system.
The main source of light is the variable star V1025 Taurus in the very center. One of the three stars is obscured by part of the nebula: this is another variable star, which belongs to the so-called T Tauri star type. Objects of this class have recently formed and have not yet entered the main sequence. They are very active and are sources of powerful stellar winds.
Just to the left of the center of the image, beneath the clouds of the nebula, you can see a small, flattened orange spot crossed by a dark line. This is a newly formed protostar surrounded by a disk that blocks some of its light. Since the disk is positioned edge-on to us, it is an ideal object for study. Astronomers actively use the Hubble telescope to understand what types of exoplanets can form in it.
Earlier, we reported on how the Dark Energy Camera photographed ominous nebulae in the constellation Chamaeleon.
According to Esahubble
