3D hydrodynamic simulation and visualization showing the formation of a massive protostar W75N(B)-VLA 2.
Scientists are getting a rare chance to watch a star form.
In a paper published Thursday in Science, Carlos Carrasco-Gonzalez and his colleagues said they were able to compare images taken 18 years apart of a massive star called W75N(B)-VLA 2, which is about eight times more massive than the sun.
Using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array, a collection of 27 telescopes at an observatory in New Mexico, the researchers compared images from 2014 and 1996 of the protostar some 4,200 light years away from Earth and noticed visible milestones of its development.
"This is the first time we have seen the behavior of a massive star so young. It is like an embryo of a star," Carrasco-Gonzalez, of the Center of Radioastronomy and Astrophysics of the National Autonomous University of Mexico and leader of the research team, said of the formation that will take hundreds of thousands of years.
"We want to know how these stars are formed," he said. "This is important because complex elements are needed in the universe and we think those elements are within massive stars. At the end of their life, they release a lot of material that could be used to form planets and solar systems."
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