ESA ESO VLT: Newborn Massive Stars Dwarf Full-Grown Stellar Giants

Artist’s impression illustrating the formation process of massive stars. 

At the end of the formation process, the surrounding accretion disk disappears, revealing the surface of the young star. 

At this phase the young massive star is much larger than when it has reached a stable equilibrium.

CREDIT: Lucas Ellerbroek/Lex Kaper University of Amsterdam

Massive stars generally start out life much bigger than they will be in maturity, a new study seems to confirm.

Astronomers from the University of Amsterdam got a rare look at a massive star in the process of forming and found that the star will contract until it has reached a stable equilibrium.

The researchers studied the young star B275, which lies in the Omega Nebula, also called the Swan Nebula or Messier 17. This hotbed of gas, dust and young stars lies approximately 5,500 light-years from Earth, in the direction of the Sagittarius constellation.

Astronomers typically struggle to obtain clear observations of a massive star as it is forming, since newborn stars are deeply embedded and obscured in their parent clouds of gas and dust.

Peering through the haze
To lift the veil on the process of star formation, the researchers sifted through ultraviolet and infrared data collected from a powerful spectrograph instrument, called the X-shooter, on the European Space Agency's Very Large Telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile.

"The large-wavelength coverage of X-shooter provides the opportunity to determine many stellar properties at once, like the surface temperature, size, and the presence of a disk," study lead author Bram Ochsendorf said in a statement.

Ochsendorf analyzed the data as part of his master's research project at the University of Amsterdam.

The results indicate that B275 is about three times larger than stars that are about seven times more massive than our sun and have reached the so-called main sequence phase of their lives.

The main sequence phase represents a specific stage of stellar evolution in which a star burns hydrogen into helium. (Our own sun is currently in its main sequence.)

The team's findings appear to confirm a theory of star formation predicting that a newly formed massive star will contract until it reaches a more stable state.

Dancing Robot Swan Triggers Emotional response

The Dying Swan is sometimes moving smoothly and gently, sometimes in a dramatic and fiery manner, as Tchaikovsky's majestic music from the ballet Swan Lake is playing.

Yet this is no ordinary ballet , but a robot in the form of a swan, created at Malardalen University and choreographed by professional dancer Asa Unander-Scharin.

The swan robot's just over four-minute-long dance has so far been seen only by a select few. Nonetheless, it has already made a big impression. Tearful eyes and words like "touching", "fascinating" and "beautiful" are some of the reactions.

- We want to explore the limits of what a robot can do, what human expressions it can mimic, and how it affects people's perception of the robot when it makes an appearance in art and dance, says Lars Asplund, Professor of Computer Science at Malardalen University in Vasteras, Sweden.

His research field is robotics and he has designed the approximately one-metre-tall dancing swan on the basis of a robot that was previously a student's degree project. The robot was built by a modular system and in the white wings, neck, beak and feet there are a total of 19 different joints, which makes it very flexible.

The idea for the dancing robot was hatched jointly by Lars Asplund and his colleague Kerstin Gauffin, who works with theatre at Malardalen University.

- With our swan we are showing that we can use robots in new ways - simply because they are beautiful and give the audience new experiences, says Kerstin Gauffin, who wants to see robots appear on stages along with "ordinary" actors.