FaintFuzzies.ca » Could We Be Seeing The Birth Of a Star?

J Swift/NASA/JPL–Caltech/E Churchwell (University of Wisconsin) and James Clerk Maxwell Telescope/Joint Astronomy Centre.

Astronomy Now, the UK astronomy magazine has an article on there website regarding the potential for a dark molecular cloud in a region of the Milkway called the Aquila Rift, giving birth to a large star as large as 8 times the mass of the sun.

“The mass and density of this object along with the lack of evidence for star formation is unique, and this fits very well with our expectations for massive pre-stellar cores,” says Swift. That said, theoretical models predict that star-formation could be kick-started and form massive stars in as little as 50,000 years. The radiation from massive stars can quickly destroy the environments in which they grow up, and this incredibly fast process (on galactic timescale anyway) means that finding dark cores is a rare occurrence. This just highlights how important this discovery in the Aquila Rift is to our understanding of the birth and evolution of the most enormous stars in the Universe.