A new telescope probes a young protostar
Wednesday, April 3, 2013 - 07:30
in Astronomy & Space
(Phys.org) —IRAS 16293-2922B is a very young star – a protostar - perhaps only about ten thousand years old. Slightly smaller in mass than our Sun, it is still deeply embedded in its surrounding natal material, and apparently is even accreting some of that material onto a circumstellar disk that rings the protostar. In the past decade, it has become possible to study such extremely early stages of star formation thanks to submillimeter and infrared telescopes that can peer through the heavy obscuration of dust in the birth clouds. For the first time, astronomers have been able to address some of the key physical processes underway in these early stages of stellar gestation.