A gorgeous new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a triple star system, including HP Tau, that's less than 10 million years old.
A gorgeous new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a triple star system, where three stars are working in tandem to create a reflection nebula. The trio of stars are located 550 light-years away, and include one particular star, HP Tau, that is like a younger version of our sun and will eventually grow up to be a similar hydrogen-fueled star in millions of years’ time.
At the moment, HP Tau is less than 10 million years old, compared to the 4.6 billion year age of the sun. It is currently a type of star called a T Tauri star, which is a variable type of star that changes in brightness over time.
Recommended Videos Some variable stars are predictable and change brightness over a fixed period, such as Cepheid variables, which pulsate in a predictable manner with a relationship between their overall brightness and the speed at which the changes in brightness happen.
Related But other stars vary their brightness in unpredictable ways — like the nearby star Betelgeuse, which was once one of the brightest objects in the sky, but whose brightness has fluctuated wildly in recent years.
As for HP Tau, this star appears to be changing in brightness in both predictable and unpredictable ways: unpredictable because its actual brightness is fluctuating as its grows through the early stage of its life, and predictable because it has large sunspots.
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