Hubble Captures Birth Of A Star

Stuck in a midweek malaise?
You might be wasting your days.
Captured from afar:
The birth of a star!
Hubble can really amaze!

Source: NASA

What you are seeing here is a 13 year time lapse animation of outgassing caused by the formation of a star, as captured by Hubble. The scale in the bottom right denotes distance in astronomical units, the mean distance between the Sun and Earth. For a sense of scale, the orbit of Neptune is 30AU.

This is an image of a proto-star near the Orion Nebula. What we see is gas, moving at over 700,000 kph, running into slower moving materiel.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/hubble/science/supersonic-jets.html

http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/08/31/140087297/hubble-captures-time-lapse-videos-of-stars-being-born