Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/L. Cieza (University of Texas at Austin)
Scientists in the University of Chicago’s Origins Laboratory have published the latest in a series of papers about the origin of the solar system. Infant stars glow reddish-pink in this infrared image of the Serpens star-forming region, captured by NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Four and a half billion years ago, the sun may have looked much like one of the baby stars deeply embedded in the cosmic cloud of gas and dust that collapsed to create it.