Space Adventures.
EarthLOS. Earth View. My Solar System 2.03. Hubble Captures Time-Lapse Videos Of Stars Being Born : The Picture Show. The birth of star is just as traumatic as the birth of a person, only on a much larger scale. For years, astronomers have known that newly formed stars fire powerful beams of gas into space called "protostellar jets. " Because almost every young star forms these jets, astronomers have been desperate to get a better understanding of their evolution and their role in the star formation process.
Until recently, however, astronomers had to be content with simple snapshots of the infant stars and their jets — not a great help when it comes to understanding how something moves. Now, using pictures taken by the Hubble Space Telescope across more than a decade, my colleagues and I have been able to create movies of the jets. Pat Hartigan of Rice University and I (along with other collaborators) produced movies that provide a new perspective on protostellar jets as they blast away from their newly formed stars.