Awww! This is what a baby star looks like
A specialized telescope snaps a celestially adorable picture of a newborn star that's a mere 40,000 years old.
Stars are so cute when they're little.
This high-resolution image from the European Southern Observatory's ALMA telescope in Chile shows a star in its infancy. The fuzziness comes from a surrounding of dust. The star, named HH 212, qualifies as a baby at just 40,000 years old. The ESO says low-mass stars of this kind typically live about 100 billion years.
Astronomers love to compare stellar objects with things found on Earth. In this case, the ESO notes the star's resemblance to a cosmic hamburger thanks to the cooler material running through the middle and the bun-like brighter areas on either side.
"This is the very first time astronomers have spotted such a dust lane in the earliest phases of star formation, and so it may provide clues as to how planetary systems are born," the ESO noted in a release.
The star is located 1,300 light-years away from Earth in the Orion Nebula. There is no word on whether or not astronomers plan to throw it a baby shower.
