Astronomers in Chile have captured footage of a star in the process of being born.
The ALMA radio telescope -- a joint venture between North America, Europe and Asia -- recorded the images from the birth.
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This image of Herbig-Haro object HH 46/47 combines radio observations acquired with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) with much shorter wavelength visible light observations from ESO’s New Technology Telescope (NTT). The ALMA observations (orange and green, lower right) of the newborn star reveal a large energetic jet moving away from us, which in the visible is hidden by dust and gas. To the left (in pink and purple) the visible part of the jet is seen, streaming partly towards us. (ALMA)
According the SPACE.com, the images show the "nascent star about 1,400 light-years from Earth unleashing material at nearly 84,477 mph (144,000 km/h), which then crashes into surrounding gas, causing it to glow."
ALMA (the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array) is one of the largest ground-based astronomy projects in the world and will be the major new facility for observations in the millimeter/submillimeter regime. It is located in the Atacama desert of northern Chile.
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