ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) shot this image of the reflection nebula IC 2631.
IC 2631 is a reflection nebula made of dust clouds that reflect the light emitted from nearby stars.
Also known as the Chamaeleon Cloud, Ced 112, BRAN 341C and GN 11.08.3, it lies approximately 500 light-years away from Earth in the southern constellation of Chamaeleon.
IC 2631 was discovered in 1900 by the American astronomer DeLisle Stewart.
It is in fact the brightest nebula in the Chamaeleon Complex, a vast region of gas and dust clouds where numerous newborn and still-forming stars live.
“The cloud you see here is packed full of star-making material: gas and dust,” ESO astronomers said.
“At optical wavelengths this region contains dark patches where dust completely blocks light from background sources.”
“But this image was captured in infrared light, which can pass through dust almost unimpeded, allowing us to peer into the core of this cloud.”
IC 2631 is illuminated by one of the youngest, most massive and brightest stars in its neighborhood, HD 97300, visible to the centre-right of the image.
HD 97300 is a T Tauri star, the youngest visible stage for relatively small stars.
As these stars mature and reach adulthood they will lose mass and shrink.
But during the T Tauri phase they have not yet contracted to the more modest size that they will maintain for billions of years as main sequence stars.
These fledging stars already have surface temperatures similar to their main sequence phase and accordingly, because T Tauri-phase objects are essentially jumbo versions of their later selves, they look brighter in their oversized youth than in maturity.
They have not yet started to fuse hydrogen into helium in their cores, like normal main sequence stars, but are just starting to flex their thermal muscles by generating heat from contraction.
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