Star Birth (and Murder) Spied in Cygnus X

Star Birth (and Murder) Spied in Cygnus X

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Baby stars don’t get an easy ride during their early years; they are born into stellar nurseries bubbling with violence. One such nursery is the Cygnus X region of our galaxy, a nebula 4,500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus the Swan. Cygnus X is known as one of the brightest radio-wave emitting sources in the Milky Way and is known to contain thousands of massive stars. It is also brimming with star birth, giving us a glimpse as to what it may have been like when our sun was just a toddler, before it was too old to hang out with its siblings and drifted deep into space to live a life in solitary.

But it’s not quite time to light up your cigars in celebration of the newborns; infanticide by the older, massive stars embedded in Cygnus X is rife.