Free Astronomy Magazine July-August 2025

35 JULY-AUGUST 2025 an impressive celestial object lo- cated about 2500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Circinus. It stretches 180 light-years across and boasts a mass 250,000 times that of the Sun. Circinus West is known for harbor- ing dozens of young stellar objects — stars that are in their early stages of development. Despite being shrouded in dense gas and dust, these infant stars make themselves known. Zooming in, vari- ous clues to their pres- ence can be seen dot- ted throughout Circinus West’s snaking tendrils. One indication of newly formed stars are the sparse pockets of light seen bursting through the murky clouds. This light is emanating from actively forming stars, and the cavities around them have been carved out by molecular out- flows — powerful jets ejected from protostars as a way to release gas S ome of the interesting features found in the celestial shadow known as the Circinus West molecular cloud. This image was taken with the Department of Energy-fabricated 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera (DECam) — one of the most powerful digital cameras in the world. Within this stellar nursery’s opaque boundaries, infant stars ignite from cold, dense gas and dust, while outflows hurtle leftover material into space. [CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA. Image Pro- cessing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Kosari (NSF NOIRLab)] other announces its birth with an explosion of light. Another signpost of star formation, of which there is no shortage of in Circinus West, is the presence of Herbig-Haro (HH) objects. HH ob- jects are glowing red patches of nebulosity commonly found near newborn stars. They form when fast-moving gas thrown out by stars smashes into slower-moving gas in the surrounding molecular cloud or interstellar medium. Visually scan- ning Circinus West will reveal count- less HH objects. To the left of Cir- MMS, three recently discovered HH objects can be seen fluttering across the face of the dark clouds. Studying the outflows in Circinus West may offer valuable clues into the star formation process and also reveal how young stars impact their environment. With such a variety of outflows, it serves as a natural laboratory for studying not just the life cycles of stars but also the dynamics of molecular clouds and the mechanisms gov- erning the evolution of galaxies. The mas- sive outflows occur- ring there may even resemble the condi- tions under which our Solar System formed, providing us a glimpse into the processes that led to our own emergence in the Uni- verse. T his video focuses on the most striking features of Circinus West, a dark nebula that hosts a nest of newly formed stars. [Images and videos: CTIO/NOIRLab/DOE/NSF/AURA. Image Processing: T.A. Rector (University of Alaska Anchorage/NSF NOIRLab), D. de Martin & M. Za- mani (NSF NOIRLab). Motion graphics and music: Mik Garrison] ! and momentum that built up dur- ing formation. These energetic out- flows are much easier for as- tronomers to find than the embed- ded stars themselves and are a pow- erful tool for studying stellar nurs- eries. Many of the bright spots seen throughout the dark clouds indicate the positions of young stars that have ejected the material around them. Multiple outflow sources can be seen within Circinus West’s cen- tral black plume, an area known as the Cir-MMS region that loosely resembles a downward-stretched hand with long, shadowy fingers. Near the center of this region the radiation from a newborn star is carving out a cavity from within the opaque cloud. And at the extreme bottom left of the central cloud an-