Hot Flares Found on Cold Stellar Embryos Fri. Brightness indicates flares. Left panel shows an optical image of the rho Ophiuchi molecular cloud.
Right panel is a molecular map of the cloud.
How stars evolve. Stars, like babies, make quite a fuss in their first days after birth Taking their closest look ever inside the womb where a star is born, astronomers found surprisingly hot flares coming from otherwise cold stellar embryos. They will use their gravity to accumulate more material from a surrounding womb of gas and dust. And eventually they will be massive enough to contract, become more dense and jump-start thermonuclear fusion. Then they will have an internal furnace like the one that drives our Sun, a more mature star.