Crystal 'Rain' in Outer Clouds of Infant Star

[n2doc]

ScienceDaily (May 27, 2011) — Tiny crystals of a green mineral called olivine are falling down like rain on a burgeoning star, according to observations from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

This is the first time such crystals have been observed in the dusty clouds of gas that collapse around forming stars. Astronomers are still debating how the crystals got there, but the most likely culprits are jets of gas blasting away from the embryonic star.

"You need temperatures as hot as lava to make these crystals," said Tom Megeath of the University of Toledo in Ohio. He is the principal investigator of the research and the second author of a new study appearing in Astrophysical Journal Letters. "We propose that the crystals were cooked up near the surface of the forming star, then carried up into the surrounding cloud where temperatures are much colder, and ultimately fell down again like glitter."

Spitzer's infrared detectors spotted the crystal rain around a distant, sun-like embryonic star, or protostar, referred to as HOPS-68, in the constellation Orion.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110526142957.htm

[Bill McBlueState]

1. I'm a co-author on this study

It was interesting to see how a technical spectroscopy paper for specialists got massaged into a press release, complete with artist's conceptions. I'm not positive that's *really* what you'd see if you were floating around in the envelope of HOPS 68 (it'd be a lot darker), but the picture gets certain points across.