
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, November 3, 1995                   TAG: 9511030088
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

SCIENCE GETS TO WATCH AS THE STARS ARE BORN

IT HAPPENED 7,000 YEARS AGO, but astronomers are still ``blown away'' by the view Hubble is giving them.

Monstrous columns of cold gas and dust, captured in a stunning photograph by the Hubble Space Telescope, are giving scientists an unprecedented view of stars being formed ``right in front of our eyes.''

The gaseous towers, six trillion miles long, resemble stalagmites rising from a cavern floor - or the heads of sea serpents. At their edges can be seen finger-like protrusions, each with tips larger than our solar system, in which stars are embedded.

``We were just blown away'' when seeing the pictures for the first time, said astronomer Jeff Hester. ``This is the kind of science that justified it [the telescope] in the first place.''

The photographs, taken April 1 and released Thursday by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, show about 50 stars that formed inside globules of especially dense molecular hydrogen gas. The stars were cradled in EGGs, a too-good-to-believe acronym for Evaporating Gaseous Globules.

``This is the first time that we have actually seen the process of forming stars being uncovered by photoevaporation,'' said Hester, the principal investigator, from Arizona State University at Tempe.

Hester and his teammates asked that the Hubble be aimed at the Eagle Nebula, a known nearby star-forming region 7,000 light years away in the constellation Serpens.

What is being captured by Hubble actually occurred 7,000 years ago.

Stars form in clouds so dense that the gas collapses under its own gravity. As they grow, the young stars dump out large amounts of energy. Massive stars, especially, are very bright, very hot and produce huge amounts of intense ultraviolet radiation.

``That radiation hollows out a cavity around them when it heats their surroundings and clears them out,'' Hester said.

He likened the process to watching a desert windstorm blow light sand away, gradually uncovering buried boulders.

by CNB