Whimsical swirls of gas, dark clouds and young stars in the Monoceros constellation. The VISTA telescope was able to see this magical creation of the Universe hidden behind clouds of interstellar dust and gas, at a distance of 2700 light years from Earth.
In the center of the picture is a newborn star under the name of Monoceros R2. Her young dense core has a volume of 2 light years. This is a small figure for the emerging stars, however, the radius of action of the gravitational force of our Sun is 1.5-2 light years too. In the case of new stars it's just a core!
Monoceros R2 is only beginning to emerge, the process of birth will take several million years. Gradually, its core will begin to contract, collecting all the hydrogen in a radius of several light years and absorbing nebula NGC 2170, behind which Monoceros R2 is hiding in this picture. At some point, under the action of gravitational forces will start the thermonuclear reaction of hydrogen and Monoceros R2 will become a full-fledged star, a huge ball of plasma.
In most cases, it is impossible to see the birth of stars even in the infrared range, because too dense clouds of cosmic dust in the region of star formation absorb any emitted and reflected light. But we are very lucky with the Monoceros R2, we can observe not only the epicenter of the birth of a star, but even the flow of the stellar wind around it.
You can also see this region in visible spectrum using the service: aladin.u-strasbg
In the visible spectrum huge accumulation of cosmic dust looks like an impenetrable black clouds.
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