Violent Starbirth

       

A newborn star announces its arrival by emitting a pair of colorful, high-speed jets of gas into space in this high-resolution image by a new giant radio telescope array called the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in the high-altitude desert of Chile.

Located some 1,400 light-years from Earth, this baby star, known as HH46/47, sits near a giant dark cloud of gas and dust that provided the seed material from which it likely formed only a few hundred thousand years ago.

The jets of gas spew out at speeds that have been clocked at nearly 620,000 miles (a million kilometers) an hour. The shockwave from these jets plows into the gas and dust that surrounds the baby star-making the material light up like neon.