Have you ever wondered what sun when it was a young star? A stunning new image from the Hubble Space Telescope has revealed a bright young star that looks like it used to be our own Sun!
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While we know the sun to be a constant, even predictable source of light in sky , its youthful form about 4.6 billion years ago was quite different. During those formative years, our star emitted solar flares about every week, though it wasn’t as bright as it is now. Scientists also suspect that even though the early sun emitted significantly less light, it was enough to keep the young Earth warm enough for life to emerge. Then, as the sun began to burn hydrogen into helium through nuclear fusion, it grew hotter and brighter over millions of years, evolving into the quiet, bright star we know it to be today.
Of course, we can't go back in time to witness these transformative events – but, thanks to NASA 's Hubble Space Telescope , we see similar young stars emerging elsewhere in the universe .
One of them is HP Tau, a very young star seen at the top of a triplet of stars in the latest Hubble image. These stars shine through a hollow cavity in a cloud of gas and dust, which itself emits a blue color, reflecting starlight in its dense swirls.
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At just 10 million years, the star HP Tau discovered by Hubble is the youngest of its siblings. It lies about 550 light-years from Earth in the constellation Taurus and has not yet begun the nuclear fusion process that it will soon rely on for its energy and light. The star, currently shrouded in dense clouds of gas and dust in which it was born, is well on its way to becoming a star like our Sun, scientists say.
HP Tau's brightness changes over time, both periodically and randomly — a cosmic quirk that scientists believe is due to the chaotic nature of the young star. The random changes in HP Tau's brightness can be attributed to surrounding material falling into the star and being devoured by its collisions, as well as flares that occur on the star's surface. The more periodic changes could be due to sunspots that mark the star as it rotates in and out, the scientists say.
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The Hubble images of the star are important because our own sun will outlive us. That's why astronomers are interested in studying sun-like stars elsewhere in the universe that are at different stages of their life cycles, from which they can decode the past, relate it to the present, and draw conclusions about the future of our own sun.
Source: space.com
