Music
Music
Narrator: Not far from the colorful nebula
M78, in a dark cloud where stars are being formed, a young
star announced its presence by lighting up a nebula never cataloged
before. Astronomers first noticed McNeil's Nebula in
2003, which drew their attention to the young star illuminating it,
named V1647 Orionis. The star
sports a pair on intense X-ray "hot spots" thousands of times
hotter than the rest of the star. These spots are thought to be the footprints
of streams that transfer gas from a disk that still surrounds the young
star. Scientists think that magnetic reconnection events--
the energy source for outbursts from our own sun--channel and drive
the gas flows. The star, which spins once in about a day,
rotates faster than the disk, and constantly winds up the
magnetic fields, which release a great deal of energy when they snap back into 
lower-energy states. This protostar's X-ray
variations are giving astronomers a rare glimpse of energetic phenomena
accompanying the "toddler" phase of a low-mass star.
Music. Beeping
Beeping
