dipper@utastro.UUCP (11/22/86)
What happens when a REAL star is born -- after this. November 22 A Star Is Born We know that stars don't last forever. They're born from vast clouds of gas and dust in interstellar space. They live millions or billions of years -- and then they die, sometimes fading slowly into darkness like the embers of a dying fire. But it's not easy to watch the evolution of stars -- since they live many millions of times longer than we do. When we look out into the galaxy, we see stars at different stages of their evolution. It's sort of like looking at snapshots of people, all at different ages. Putting all the snapshots together helps us learn the big picture on how stars live out their lives. And the picture gets clearer all the time. Recently, astronomers discovered what they say is a star in the process of being born. We know many places in the galaxy where stars probably are forming -- many huge clouds of interstellar gas and dust. But now some astronomers say they've gotten a look at the birth process -- a process in which fragments of the clouds collapse to form stars. The developing star is located about 500 light-years away in the constellation Ophiuchus. Using a radio telescope at very high radio frequencies, astronomers can see for the first time that the inner cloud is falling into the star -- adding to the star's mass -- and making it glow. Eventually, perhaps a hundred thousand years from now, the developing star will be massive enough for thermonuclear fusion reactions to "turn on" in its core. These reactions are what enable most stars to shine for most of their lives. All stars eventually die -- but on the average about one new star is born every year somewhere in our galaxy. Script by Deborah Byrd. (c) Copyright 1985, 1986 McDonald Observatory, University of Texas at Austin