A New Record: The Largest Baby Star, Ever?

Stellar birth cloud 500 times the mass of the sun, study says.

An artist's impression of a massive forming star, possibly the largest baby star ever detected.

Illustration courtesy David A. Hardy, AstroArt/U. Manchester

Andrew Fazekas

for National Geographic

Published July 11, 2013

Astronomers announced this week that they may have discovered the largest baby star ever detected, nestled within a stellar nursery 10,000 light-years away.

The embryonic stellar monster, known as a protostar, sits at the center of a whirling dark cloud with tentacles of gas and dust. The cloud —which is 500 times the mass of our sun — is the largest ever seen in our galaxy.

"We have discovered the most massive protostar known in our galaxy and a beautiful network of filaments funneling even more matter onto it," said Gary Fuller, the study's co-author and an astronomer at the University of Manchester in England.

"Only about 1 in 10,000 stars is as massive as the one we are seeing forming."

Using radio observations obtained from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, the nascent star has been caught in the act of still forming — gobbling up its surrounding cloud of gas and dust known as the Spitzer Dark Cloud (SDC) 335.579-0.292. The SDC was named after the NASA infrared space telescope that first spotted it.

Fuller suspects that because the protostar is still feeding, it is continuing to grow as it gathers mass from the cloud.

"It's surprising that we managed to find such an extreme and rare object with some of the very first observations made with ALMA, at the same time revealing the complex nest of filaments which are feeding this baby monster," he said.

At some point in the distant future, the surrounding cloud is expected to completely collapse in on the star, making it more than a million times brighter than our sun, says Fuller.

However, because the star is still in the early stages of its life, astronomers can only make an educated guess about its final mass. Comparisons with recently discovered record-breaking mature stars indicate that it may end up at least 200 to 300 times the mass of the sun when it is fully formed. (Related: "Most Massive Star Discovered—Shatters Record.")

Fast and Furious

But astronomically at least, the wait won't be long, especially when compared with the lifetimes of dwarf stars like our sun, which are measured in billions of years. Massive objects like the one forming live fast and die young in huge stellar explosions, says Fuller.

"It will take only about 100,000 years for the star to grow to its final mass, and by then it will have cleared away the remaining dust and gas around itself and become visible at optical wavelengths," said Fuller. "After less than a million years, it will then die as a spectacular supernova."

While this newfound star-forming region is the largest yet, some in the astronomy community caution against jumping to the conclusion that this may be the birth of a true record-breaking stellar giant.

"What the study team saw is a dense cloud of gas that they think, probably correctly, is going to collapse to form a massive star at some point in the future;  however, one or more small stars are hidden behind the huge amount of dust in the cloud, and thus there is no way of measuring their present masses," said astronomer Mark Krumholz of the University of California, Santa Cruz, who is not connected with the study.

In other words, with so much obscuring dust there would be no way to measure the forming star's current weight nor predict its final mass, so the 500 solar masses observed is actually the mass of the cloud, not the mass of the star itself.

"While it is likely that there will be one or more that end up significantly more massive than the sun, there is no good reason to believe that any of the stars formed in this cloud are, or will be, the most massive in the Milky Way," explained Krumholz.

Regardless of who holds the heavyweight title, supermassive stars like the one growing in this distant cloud are known to play a key role in peppering the cosmos with the basic building blocks for solar systems like ours.

Current theories hold that our sun's empire was born about five billion years ago from the ashes of an ancient supernova explosion.

"Without such massive stars, there wouldn't be heavy elements in the universe," said Fuller.

"The supernova which marks the death of a massive star seeds the galaxy with the heavy elements that eventually form rocky planets like the Earth, and are essential for life."

Space Shuttle Endeavour Inspires Los Angeles

According to one local resident, people in Los Angeles are hard to impress. “The Lakers win again? Eh. Hollywood stars, monsters, and explosions all over town? Eh. Just another day in this city.”

But bring a real spaceship to town and tow it through the streets? That’ll do it.

The space shuttle Endeavour began its journey to its eventual home at the California Science Center in the earliest hours of Friday, October 12th, but it never went faster than a 2 mph crawl and sometimes ground to a halt as workers guided it through narrow streets and coordinated crowds of onlookers. “Twenty-four hours to go from the airport to Inglewood? Sounds about right,” joked some locals in the crowd, even though that journey is less than a couple of miles.

Her first stop felt appropriate for LA, the parking lot of a shopping center. But on this day it was transformed into a street festival of kids, bikes, dogs, strollers, flags, and right in the middle…an actual space shuttle. People rushed around to get a look at her from all angles, the local charter school sold water and cookies. Add a funnel cake stand and some cotton candy and you would have had a space carnival.

The shuttle rests in a local Los Angeles shopping center parking lot. Hundreds of street signs, stoplights, trees, and other obstacles had to be temporarily removed to allow her to pass. By the next morning, all of these signs had been returned. Photo Credit: Jon Brack

That afternoon I walked down Manchester Avenue chatting with local residents as the shuttle approached its first major stop in front of Randy’s Donuts, a Los Angeles icon. People sat outside in lawn chairs in anticipation, not letting the fact that she might not be there until the next morning dampen their enthusiasm. No one mentioned the trees, or the traffic hassle, just pure joy at the possibility of catching a glimpse. The most common conversation starter was “did you see it when it flew over?” and almost always people remembered exactly where they were when she arrived a few weeks earlier and circled overhead.

The space shuttle Endeavour turns down Manchester Avenue in downtown Los Angeles, approaching the overpass for the 405 freeway. Here she had to change to a lighter transport to lessen the load on the bridge. Photo Credit: Jon Brack.

At sunset, she pulled down the street, and residents flocked to the sides of the freeway, pulling over their cars and scrambling up the embankment to get a better view and a quick photo. Endeavour crossed the 405 freeway overpass and arrived on the other side, where she remained over night, lit majestically for the crowds who continued to show up all through the night.

Crowds gather on the side of the 405 freeway in downtown Los Angeles to catch a glimpse of the shuttle. When she eventually crossed the overpass, police closed the highway to avoid onlookers from causing accidents. Photo Credit: Susan Poulton

After crossing the 405 freeway, the shuttle comes to rest for the night in front of the Best Western on Manchester Ave. Photo Credit: Jon Brack

Crowds eagerly snap photos of the shuttle during her overnight hours in front of Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, a popular landmark in the neighborhood. Photo Credit: Susan Poulton

On Saturday, the crowds not lining the streets were waiting for Endeavour at the corner of Crenshaw Ave. and Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. where a dance display choreographed by Debbie Allen awaited them, to be timed with the shuttle’s ninety-degree turn to face the final leg of her journey. The shuttle was delayed over six hours, and the dances happened without their planned backdrop.

But the crowds remained, and when the shuttle nosed into view just after sunset, towering above anything they expected, they literally screamed in excitement. People were genuinely surprised by her size and how, for lack of a better word, real she looked. “That’s a spaceship! In our backyard!” It was an emotional moment and there was an intense pride that’s difficult to put into words.

Crowds who had been waiting for hours for the shuttle to arrive got a treat when her tail and main engines swung over the crowd while making a ninety-degree turn onto Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd. Photo Credit: Susan Poulton

Personally, I’m always happy when people are talking about and excited about space exploration. Throughout the day, everyone on the street knew something about the shuttle, even if it was completely incorrect (“did you know it FOUND the moon?”), but the best part was the curiosity to know more demonstrated by everyone.

Just like earlier this month when the Curiosity rover landed on Mars, I think the biggest winners of the moment are exploration and science. I hope Endeavour serves as a catalyst to inspire more exploration in the decades ahead.

Debbie Allen captured it perfectly while keeping the crowds warmed up during the Saturday delays. “We are giving this town the greatest gift, the gift of possibility. This shows that it is possible. And all of the kids in all of the neighborhoods in Los Angeles, I ask them, what will their next mission be?”

So, what’s your next mission?

Starburst Galaxy Could Illuminate Early Universe

This massive starburst galaxy was pumping out stars way before thought possible.

An illustration of a starburst galaxy, similar to one—dubbed HFLS3—recently found by researchers.

Illustration courtesy C. Carreau, ESA

A newfound primordial galaxy nearly 13 billion light-years away is breaking distance records and may unlock the secrets of how and when some of the most massive star factories were born in the early universe, according to a new study.

Using the infrared mapping capabilities of the European Space Agency'sHerschel space telescope, a team of astronomers have spied the faraway light of a starburst galaxy—one that exhibits a high rate of star formation—from when the 14-billion-year-old universe was just 880 million years old.

Dubbed HFLS3, the galaxy—which is the farthest starburst galaxy yet found—was caught in the act of forming and pumping out new stars at unheard of rates more than a billion years earlier than expected.

"This newly discovered galaxy is pushing the extremes in virtually every aspect of its existence," said Dominik Riechers, an astronomer at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and lead author of the new paper published April 17 in the journal Nature.

"It is not only the earliest we have discovered, but also one of the most intensely star-forming, even among its peers that exist at later epochs," he said.

While its overall size is estimated to be similar to the size of our own Milky Way, scientists were stunned to find that the starburst galaxy is churning out matter with the mass equivalent of 2,900 suns every year. (Read about the Milky Way inNational Geographic magazine.)

"It forms stars at a rate more than 2,000 times that of our own Milky Way, and close to the limit where it can stay stable in light of the intense, plentiful, high-energy radiation emitted by the many newly formed young stars," Riechers added.

A Messy Youth

Despite being enshrouded in dust and so near the edge of the cosmos, HFLS3 appears unusually bright, radiating in infrared wavelengths that shine with a power equivalent to 30 trillion suns.

This tipped off the researchers that they must have discovered a massive starburst galaxy, because the celestial object could shine so brightly only because of unusually high star-formation activity.

Another surprise for Riechers and his team was that spectroscopic measurements, which reveal the galaxy's chemical fingerprints, indicate that it possesses a rich and diverse chemical composition, similar to present-day starburst galaxies.

Because most of the heavier elements, like carbon and iron, are thought to have formed from the ashes of the first generation of stars in the universe, astronomers have speculated these atoms should be absent in the first billion years or so after the Big Bang.

"This is an indication that the intense star formation in [HFLS3] has already been going on for a significant amount of time, long enough for the shortest-lived stars to explode and pollute their environments with all the heavy elements that we see," said Riechers.

Galactic Embryo

Until now, starburst galaxies—thought to be responsible for the rapid buildup of most of the stars that make up a lot of today's massive galaxies—were thought to form only at much later time periods than HFLS3.

"While only at later times did most larger galaxies start to form and accumulate sufficient gas to become prolific star factories, this discovery shows that, under exceptional circumstances, the most intense star-forming events in the universe can take place as early as 880 million years after the Big Bang, enabling the formation of mature, massive galaxies very early on," said Riechers.

This unexpected finding starts to explain why we currently see some of the oldest known stars residing in elliptical galaxies, said Chris Carilli, an astronomer with the National Radio Astronomy Observatory headquartered in Charlottesville, Virginia.

"We now see why: They formed a long time ago," said Carilli, who was not involved with the study. "Distant starbursts likely represent the formation of elliptical galaxies in spectacular, explosive events in the early universe."

These most massive galaxies, or ellipticals, are currently found at the centers of large galaxy clusters. So HFLS3 is likely the galactic embryo of such a present-day massive, central cluster galaxy, said Carilli.

"These observations have pushed the whole process of massive galaxy formation back to the edge of 'first light' in the Universe," he added.

Inside the Space Shuttle Carrier Aircraft

The Shuttle Carrier Aircraft, here delivering the space shuttle Discovery to the Smithsonian, is due to make its final flight this week. Photo: Jon Brack

This week, when the space shuttle Endeavour flies from Kennedy Space Center to Los Angeles and its new home at the California Science Center, it also means the retirement of the Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) that has been responsible for transporting all the space shuttles for over 35 years.

Edwards Air Force Base in California has had both the responsibility and honor of being the home of the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft since the earliest days of the shuttle program. The team in charge of flying and servicing the two 747s is preparing to say their own goodbyes as the final ferry flights brings a shuttle back to the West Coast.

Driving through the entrance of Edwards is like entering another world. The desert is stark, the land flat, and the sun intense. Even at 7 am, the heat rises off the flats of Rogers Dry Lake in wavy mirages of distortion. The history of the area is palpable and it almost feels like the sonic boom of Chuck Yeager’s Bell X-1 is still echoing off of the distant mountains all the way from 1947.

Dryden Flight Research Center sits at the northern end of the base and has an immediate familiarity to it, exactly what you’d expect a test flight facility to look like. The remaining Shuttle Carrier 747 sits on the tarmac while nearby the mate/de-mate structure, used to attach the shuttle to the carrier plane, towers in a truss of steel. A third of all shuttle missions landed here, all requiring a ferry flight back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida to prepare the orbiter for the next launch.

With the space shuttle’s new mission of education and inspiration now residing in museums instead of space, the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft that I visited that day was poised and ready for its final opportunity to carry an orbiter. After transporting Endeavour coast-to-coast on a multiple-day journey that stops at multiple NASA facilities along the way, the mated pair will land at LAX and be separated. As Endeavour makes her way to the California Science Center for public display in a grand parade October 12-13, the SCA will head to Palmdale, CA, to await possible decommissioning in an aircraft boneyard.

Most of the NASA employees associated with the shuttle are already gone, laid off in the massive reorganizations affecting NASA at facilities across the country. The lone aircraft mechanic from the original SCA maintenance team was left to reflect on an uncertain future after servicing the planes for these final flights. Other staff are slowly coming to the delayed realization that this part of the program is also over.

Untouched for decades and showing its age, the original first class seating still remains in the Shuttle Carrier Aircraft (SCA) as a workspace for employees accompanying the shuttle to its destination. Photo Credit: Jon Brack

The plane itself is vintage, older than the orbiters it was responsible for transporting. Built in 1970, with few modernizations other than the extreme customization necessary to safely carry a 172,000 pound (78,018 kilogram) piggybacking spacecraft, it began its career as a passenger 747 for American Airlines.

Since NASA acquired the plane in 1974, it has been stationed at Dryden and Edwards along with another carrier plane added to the fleet in 1990. The two have been icons of the base, only ever leaving to transport an orbiter back east. The newer SCA has already been retired to Palmdale. When this aircraft departs to the west with Endeavour on September 19th for LAX after their final refueling stop, she’ll never return. It’s the end of an era after almost 40 years of service.

NASA Tracks Russian Meteor Plume

A meteor weighing 10,000 metric tons exploded 14 miles above Chelyabinsk, Russia, on Feb. 15, 2013. Unlike similar past events, this time scientists had the sensitive instruments on the Suomi NPP satellite to deliver unprecedented data and help them track and study the meteor plume for months.