I know I've been posting a lot of astropr0n lately, but there's just been so much cool stuff the past few days (and there's more to come)! The European Space Agency just threw their hat into the ring with this crazy cool image of a young star blowing its stack:
[Click it to ennebulanate, or grab yourself some megasized 2100 x 2100 pixel action.] I love this image! It shows the havoc caused by young stars as they spew out material at speed upwards of a million kilometers per hour. What you're seeing is actually a small part of a star-forming region surrounding the star R Corona Australis, a nearby 550 light years away. It's a densely packed cloud of thick dust and gas, completely hiding the stars inside and behind it. It's not terribly big, only a couple of light years across -- compare that to the Orion Nebula, ...