Herschel Space Observatory Spots Some of the Youngest Stars Ever Seen

Astronomers have identified some of the youngest stars ever seen, thanks to the European Space Agency's (ESA) Herschel space observatory.

Dense envelopes of gas and dust surround the fledgling stars known as protostars, making their detection difficult. The 15 newly observed protostars turned up by surprise in a survey of the biggest site of star formation near our solar system, located in the constellation Orion.

Protostars are stars in their earliest phases of development. Stars in this early phase of development are the least studied types of stars, due to their rarity.

The observatory's Photodetector Array Camera and Spectrometer (PACS) instrument was used to collect far-infrared light at a length comparable to that of a human hair. These readings were then compared to earlier data collected by NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, before being corroborated by radio wave observations from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope in Chile.

Astronomers have previously studied the stellar nursery in the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, but the large group of fledgling stars was missed until Herschel observed the region.

The discovery offers scientists a peek into one of the earliest and least understood phases of star formation.

"Herschel has revealed the largest ensemble of such young stars in a single star-forming region," explained Amelia Stutz a postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany.

"With these results, we are getting closer to witnessing the moment when a star begins to form."

"Previous studies have missed the densest, youngest and potentially most extreme and cold protostars in Orion," Stutz said. "These sources may be able to help us better understand how the process of star formation proceeds at the very earliest stages, when most of the stellar mass is built up and physical conditions are hardest to observe."