ALMA | NRAO | ESO | NAOJ | CfA | 2017 Mar 15
[img3="Inside the Cats's Paw Nebula, as seen in an infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope (left), ALMA discovered that an infant star is undergoing an intense growth spurt, shining nearly 100 brighter than before and reshaping its stellar nursery (right). Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), T. Hunter; C. Brogan, B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); GLIMPSE, NASA/JPL-Caltech/Spitzer"]https://public.nrao.edu/images/pr/2017c ... a_nrao.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]A massive protostar, deeply nestled in its dust-filled stellar nursery, recently roared to life, shining nearly 100 times brighter than before. This outburst, apparently triggered by an avalanche of star-forming gas crashing onto the surface of the star, supports the theory that young stars can undergo intense growth spurts that reshape their surroundings.
Astronomers made this discovery by comparing new observations from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile with earlier observations from the Submillimeter Array (SMA) in Hawaii. ...
In 2008, before the era of ALMA, Hunter and his colleagues used the SMA to observe a small but active portion of the Cat's Paw Nebula (also known as NGC 6334), a star-forming complex located about 5,500 light-years from Earth in the direction of the southern constellation Scorpius. This nebula is similar in many respects to its more northern cousin, the Orion Nebula, which is also brimming with young stars, star clusters, and dense cores of gas that are on the verge of becoming stars. The Cat's Paw Nebula, however, is forming stars at a faster rate.
The initial SMA observations of this portion of the nebula, dubbed NGC 6334I, revealed what appeared to be a typical protocluster: a dense cloud of dust and gas harboring several still-growing stars. ...
The new ALMA observations of this region, taken in 2015 and 2016, reveal that dramatic changes occurred toward a portion of the protocluster called NGC 6334I-MM1 after the original SMA observations. This region is now about four times brighter at millimeter wavelengths, meaning that the central protostar is nearly 100 times more luminous than before. ...
An Extraordinary Outburst in the Massive Protostellar System
NGC 6334I-MM1: Quadrupling of the Millimeter Continuum - T. R. Hunter et al
- Astrophysical Journal Letters 837(2):L29 (2017 Mar 10) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8213/aa5d0e
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1701.08637 > 30 Jan 2017 (v1), 15 Feb 2017 (v2)