{"id":9810,"date":"2016-08-30T10:58:32","date_gmt":"2016-08-30T10:58:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/?p=9810"},"modified":"2016-08-30T10:58:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-30T10:58:32","slug":"not-your-typical-protostar","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/not-your-typical-protostar\/","title":{"rendered":"Not your typical protostar"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_9811\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-9811\" style=\"width: 700px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-9811\" src=\"http:\/\/revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg\" alt=\"ESA\/Herschel\/PACS\/Hi-GAL Project, KU Leuven\" width=\"700\" height=\"524\" title=\"\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg 700w, https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2-300x224.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 700px) 100vw, 700px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-9811\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">ESA\/Herschel\/PACS\/Hi-GAL Project, KU Leuven<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">At the centre of this image, captured by\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: normal; color: #d0103a;\" href=\"http:\/\/sci.esa.int\/herschel\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">ESA\u2019s Herschel space observatory<\/a>, is a truly peculiar cosmic object: a star named IRAS\u00a019312+1950.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Located over 12\u00a0000 light-years from us, this star has puzzled astronomers for many years because it shows conflicting signs of being both extremely old and extremely young.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Astronomers have spotted signs of emission usually associated with old, late-type stars: silicon oxide and hydroxyl masers \u2013 the microwave equivalent of a visible-light laser.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">But they have also discovered characteristics mostly seen around early-type stars: a chemical-rich enveloping cloud usually seen around youthful stars and in regions of star formation.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Infrared observations from both Herschel and\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: normal; color: #d0103a;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission_pages\/spitzer\/main\/index.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">NASA\u2019s Spitzer Space Telescope<\/a>\u00a0now\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: normal; color: #d0103a;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/feature\/goddard\/2016\/nasa-team-probes-peculiar-age-defying-star\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">suggest that it may instead be a star in the making<\/a>, rather than a fully-fledged or ancient star. In other words, it is a protostar.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">The star is about 10 times as massive as the Sun and emits about 20\u00a0000 times as much energy. It appears to be rich in oxygen, and has jets of gas streaming from both poles at speeds of at least 90\u00a0km\/s.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">In addition, it is surrounded and obscured by a collapsing cloud of gas, dust and ice \u2013 including large quantities of water and carbon dioxide ice \u2013 that contains an overall mass equivalent to 500 to 700 Suns.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">Although it displays features atypical of its peers, astronomers believe it to be a stellar embryo fast approaching the end of its \u2018accretion\u2019 stage, the period in which it feeds upon surrounding material to fuel its growth. Although the region had not been pinpointed as a stellar nursery before, there are signs of recently formed and youthful stars nearby, supporting this idea.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: justify;\">This image is a composite of infrared data gathered by Herschel\u2019s Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer (<a style=\"font-weight: normal; color: #d0103a;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.esa.int\/Our_Activities\/Space_Science\/Herschel\/Instruments\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">PACS<\/a>) at 70 (green) and 160 (blue) microns. The associated research is\u00a0<a style=\"font-weight: normal; color: #d0103a;\" href=\"http:\/\/arxiv.org\/abs\/1607.00432\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">published<\/a>\u00a0in the<i>Astrophysical Journal.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Located over 12 000 light-years from us, this star has puzzled astronomers for many years because it shows conflicting signs of being both extremely old and extremely young.<\/p>\n<p>Astronomers have spotted signs of emission usually associated with old, late-type stars: silicon oxide and hydroxyl masers \u2013 the microwave equivalent of a visible-light laser.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":9811,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9810","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space-news"],"featured_image_urls":{"full":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,524,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2-150x150.jpg",150,150,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2-300x224.jpg",300,224,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,524,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,524,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,524,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,524,false],"ultp_layout_landscape_large":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,524,false],"ultp_layout_landscape":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",700,524,false],"ultp_layout_portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,449,false],"ultp_layout_square":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",600,449,false],"newspaper-x-single-post":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",655,490,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-big":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",481,360,false],"newspaper-x-recent-post-list-image":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",87,65,false],"web-stories-poster-portrait":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",640,479,false],"web-stories-publisher-logo":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",96,72,false],"web-stories-thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Not_your_typical_protostar_node_full_image_2.jpg",150,112,false]},"author_info":{"info":["Amrita Tuladhar"]},"category_info":"<a href=\"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/category\/news\/space-news\/\" rel=\"category tag\">Space\/ AstroPhysics<\/a>","tag_info":"Space\/ AstroPhysics","comment_count":"0","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9810","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9810"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9810\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9811"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9810"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9810"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.revoscience.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9810"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}