Free Astronomy Magazine March-April 2022

55 MARCH-APRIL 2022 ASTRO PUBLISHING cumstellar disk — a reservoir of gas and dust orbiting the star. Circum- stellar disks are typically associated with young stars and provide the materials needed to build planets. The reason the disk appears as a band rather than a circle in this image is because it is edge-on, only revealing one edge to observers here on Earth. Astronomers believe that the nebula’s central star is a young stellar object embedded the fast-moving stream of gas lights up after colliding with slower-mov- ing gas in the nebula. It is known as a Herbig-Haro (HH) object and has the designation HH 909A. Other Herbig-Haro objects have been found along the axis of the star’s outflow beyond the edges of the image to the right and left. As- tronomers have suggested that the dark band at the center of the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula is a cir- T his ethereal image, captured from Chile by the international Gemini Observatory, a Program of NSF’s NOIRLab, looks as delicate as a butterfly’s wing. It is, however, a structure known as the Chamaeleon Infrared Nebula, which is located near the center of the even larger Chamaeleon I dark cloud, one of the nearest star-forming regions in our Milky Way. [International Gemini Ob- servatory/NOIRLab/NSF/AURA]