Zooming in on the birth of a monster star

9 July, 2013 / Read time: 1 minute

This video starts with a view of the Milky Way and closes in on the constellation of Norma and one of the richest parts of the sky. We see many star clusters and glowing nebulae, but many objects of great interest are hidden by thick clouds of dust and can only be seen at longer wavelengths. The final part of the video shows a new view of the dark cloud SDC 335.579-0.292 using ALMA, the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array. These observations have given astronomers the best view yet of a monster star in the process of forming.
Credit: ESO/Nick Risinger (skysurvey.org), DSS, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NASA/JPL-Caltech/GLIMPSE. Music: movetwo