A Star Is Born in Celestial Cloud : Researchers Detect Frenzy of Creation

An immense celestial cloud is collapsing upon itself and giving birth to giant stars, confirming a classic theory of how stars are created, according to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley.

In a report being published today in Science magazine, they said at least a dozen stars already have formed in a huge ring at the core of the gas cloud known as W49A. Others are still being formed.

Astronomers have previously seen young stars in or near gas clouds, but the Berkeley researchers have gone a step further by detecting gas molecules that are being sucked into the stars by gravity at a speed of more than 40,000 m.p.h.

All this is happening in an area of the sky about 300,000 trillion miles away. The ring itself is about 6.5 light years (120 trillion miles) in diameter and contains about 50,000 times the mass of the sun.

The astronomers became the first to observe such an event because the large number of stars involved made it possible to observe the motion of the gas, according to radio-astronomer William J. Welch.

The study also shows that the star formation process takes place on a much larger scale than previously believed, and that dozens of stars can be formed in the gas cloud at once.