Credit: ESO/Spitzer/NASA/JPL/S. Kraus

The object IRAS 13481-6124 (the bright "star" upper left), which consists of a young central star, about twenty times the mass of our Sun and five times its radius, surrounded by its pre-natal cocoon, is the first massive baby star for which astronomers could obtain an image of a dusty disc closely encircling it, providing direct evidence that massive stars do form in the same way as their smaller brethren — and closing an enduring debate. From archival images obtained by the NASA Spitzer Space Telescope (seen here) as well as from observations done with the APEX 12-metre sub-millimetre telescope, astronomers discovered the presence of a jet, hinting at the presence of a disc. This was then confirmed by observations made with the ESO Very Large Telescope Interferometer.

Provider: European Southern Observatory

Image Source: https://www.eso.org/public/images/eso1029c/

Curator: European Southern Observatory, Garching bei München, Germany

Image Use Policy: Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License