HEIDELBERG, Germany, April 20 (UPI) -- European Space Agency astronomers say they have obtained the first look at the birth of monstrous stars that shine 100,000 times more brightly than the sun.
The discovery, made using the ESA's Infrared Space Observatory spacecraft, allows astronomers to begin investigating why only some regions of space promote the growth of such massive stars.
"This opens up a new era for the observations of the early details of high-mass star formation," said Oliver Krause of the Max-Planck-Institute for Astronomy, located in Heidelberg, Germany, and the University of Arizona's Steward Observatory in Tucson.
The ESA said the study might also help make sense of the most distant objects in the universe. "When astronomers look billions of light years into space, all they can see are the bright, high-mass stars in very distant galaxies," said Krause. "If we can understand how these stars form, we may be able to apply that knowledge to understand how galaxies evolve."
The study appears in the January issue of The Astrophysical Journal.
