Theme: Star Forming Nebulas

 

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Text, Viewspace. Coming up - See Star Formation Revealed. A countdown clock counts down when the show will continue. The clocks starts at 15 seconds and ticks down to 0 seconds. Then the screen turns black. 

 

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 Text, Somewhere in the universe, a star explodes. 

A bright white star goes supernova. A cloud of dust and gas expands outward. 

Text, The explosion sends a shock wave speeding into the cosmos. 

Not too far away, the shock wave slams into a cloud of gas and dust, pressing and squeezing the cloud's contents together. 

The shockwave compresses a red cloud of dust. 

Text, Clumps of material pull together and under the influence of gravity become ever and ever tighter. 

A bright spot appears in the red cloud and grows brighter. 

Text, Eventually these clumps become so dense and hot that hydrogen atoms start to fuse together. 

Several more bright spots appear. 

Text, This fusion process releases an enormous amount of light and heat. 

The bright spots grow intensely bright. 

Text, And from one star's death, other stars are born. 

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 Rotating planet with atmosphere, galaxies in space as backdrop. Text, at a Glance. Different kinds of cosmic clouds. 

Image of a galaxy. 

Text, Floating among the stars in our galaxy and other galaxies are huge clouds of dust and gas called nebulae. 

These nebulae are related to the stars with different kinds playing various roles in the story of stellar life and death. 

Some, called planetary nebulae, are the death throes of dying sun-like stars that have shed their outer layers into space. 

Supernova remnants are the bits and pieces of massive stars that have exploded and scattered their innards outward. 

Instead of stellar graveyards, some nebulae are stellar nurseries. These star-forming regions also come in a variety of types. 

Absorption nebulae, also known as dark nebulae, allow no visible light to pass through their boundaries. Sometimes though, newborn stars can be spotted peeking out from the edge of these shadowy clouds. 

Reflection nebulae, on the other hand, are bright. 

They reflect the light of stars within them or from stars close by. 

Emission nebulae also appear bright, because they produce their own light. 

Hot, young stars blast the cloud with ultraviolet radiation causing the nebula to heat up and glow. 

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Red space dust and yellow stars, with cloudy black areas throughout. 

 

Text, THACKERAY'S GLOBULES. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE. Dark, secretive clouds of dust and gas float against the backdrop of a brightly lit star-forming nebula. 

 

Similar clouds, when observed by astronomers, are frequently found to hide embryonic stars within their murky shrouds of dust and gas. 

 

These clouds, however, show signs of disruption — likely a side effect of residing near hot, massive stars that have already burst to life. 

 

Such duress may prevent these dark clouds from ever producing stars of their own.

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Top left, a black and white picture of a minotaur. Top right, a color picture of a nebula. 

 

Text, MYTH versus REALITY 

 

Myth side 

 

Text, The same stars have been around forever. 

 

Reality side 

 

Text, Every star eventually dies. The matter from those stars is recycled back into their surroundings, even becoming part of new stars. New stars are constantly forming from clouds of dust and gas called molecular clouds. Stars have been forming throughout most of the universe's history. Some stars are very old, but others have formed quite recently.

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 A white spiral galaxy with pink patches throughout. 

Text, WHIRLPOOL GALAXY. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE. 

This galaxy is a star factory. 

Each pink patch in its swirling spiral arms is a vast realm of star formation. 

As stars form within these nebulae, their strong stellar winds and searing ultraviolet radiation blow away their veils of gas. 

We move closer to the galaxy. Clusters of blue stars become visible. 

Text, Pockets of blue, newborn stars emerge from the haze. 

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Text, Birthplace of destruction. 

 

An image of a pale blue nebula, a massive cloud of dust filled with brightly glowing white, blue, and yellow stars. Text, giving birth to stars is a thankless job. As payment for its celestial handiwork, a star forming nebula is deformed and often destroyed by the very stars it birthed. 

 

At first, the young stars seem to honor their mother clouds by lighting them up and making them glow. 

 

An animation of moving through the clouds and stars of a reddish nebula. Text, But all the while, their energetic output is pushing away and eroding the surrounding gas and dust. 

 

Astronomers have observed an example of stars destroying their mother nebulae in the constellation Orion. The constellation Orion in the night sky, a circle around the sword hanging from his belt. 

 

The Orion Nebula is ruled by a gang of adolescent stellar bullies known as the Trapezium. 

 

Within the pinkish yellow clouds of a nebula, a cluster of stars. Text, the largest Trapezium stars terrorize their surroundings with harsh ultraviolet radiation and streams of charged particles called stellar winds. All stars, including our sun, produce stellar winds, but these massive Trapezium stars have especially strong and destructive winds. 

 

As the Trapezium's winds flow outward, they push away material, creating voids and arcs in the surrounding gas. An arc of reddish cloud with a gap beside it. Text, When the winds of the Trapezium stars collide with those of smaller stars in the orion nebula, the confrontation can form a bow shock around the smaller star. 

 

Two small stars in a nebula with a curve of light around it. Text, here two stars have bough shocks around them facing the trapezium. 

 

Scathing ultraviolet radiation from the trapezium is also making life tough for some younger stars still trying to get their start. 

 

Tiny stars in the clouds of the nebula. 

 

Text, The tufts of material from which these baby stars are trying to form are being scorched and eaten away by the Trapezium's fierce radiation. An animation of light cupping around a forming star and clouds of matter blowing away from it. A ring of clouds swirls around the bright point. Text, Even if the budding stars survive this torture, the searing radiation could strip away their ability to raise a family of planets by vaporizing their planet forming material. The spinning cloud dissipates and disappears. 

 

Text, Young stars, however, can fire back in catastrophic ways. A bright blue star shooting a jet of streaming reddish clouds. Text, For reasons not fully understood, some of the material falling onto a growing star gets rerouted and shot out from the star's pole in narrow beams called jets. 

 

An illustration of a ring of clouds around a very bright star which shoots streams of light vertically. 

 

Text, Where jets and nebula collide, bright glowing clumps and bough shocks form. Clumps of greenish clouds and bright bough-shaped formations around stars. Text, as these jets push outward, they sweep up the surrounding material and plow a trench in the nebula. 

 

A burst of expanding white clouds. 

 

As new stars continue to blossom in the Orion Nebula, its gas will keep being sculpted and blasted away by its stellar offspring. 

 

Eventually, though, the Trapezium stars will give up their reign of terror on the nebula. With one final act of destruction, each massive star will explode as a supernova. 

 

An animation of the bright white stars expanding and bursting. Text, However, their explosive shock waves could squeeze nearby clouds of gas, likely sparking a new generation of stars that carry on the Trapezium's destructive legacy. An animation of points of light glowing in a cloud of red gas. 

 

Text, The winds and radiation from the Trapezium's stellar descendants could ultimately carry out the nebula's complete annihilation. Clouds spin rapidly around a central bright star which expands and bursts into white light.

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A white nebula with long thin tendrils. 

 

Text, TARANTULA NEBULA. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE. 

 

Like a celestial Hollywood, the Tarantula Nebula is a sprawling hub of young, vivacious stars. 

 

Some stars in the nebula gather together in clusters. 

 

Throughout the nebula, these stars are shaping their environment. 

 

Their talent is to produce ultraviolet radiation and winds of charged particles that eat away at the cloud from which they formed. 

 

Their cosmic resume includes a variety of ridges, pillars, and valleys carved out of the nebula's gas and dust.

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 Text, STAR CLUSTER NGC 602. HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE. In a nearby galaxy, a cluster of hot, blue stars is obliterating the cloud of gas that gave it life. 

Vibrant blue stars shine in the middle of an orange and white nebula among other stars and black outer space. 

Text, Potent winds and high-energy radiation let loose by the young stars are eating away at the inner edge of the nebula. 

Dense parts of the cloud resist erosion, though, and jut out from the craggy rim. 

Circles highlight jutting edges of the nebula. 

Text, These towers of resistance point back to the stars guilty of the attack. 

The jutting edges point towards the large blue stars in the middle of the nebula.