NASA, ESA, G. Duchene ; Image Processing: Gladys Kober . One of the stars gives us a glimpse of what our own sun might have been like billions of years ago. The image shows a ghostly nebula with a carved-out area where a trio of stars shine together, illuminating the wispy clouds around them.
T Tauri stars are essentially stellar babies. They’re typically less than 10 million years old. That might sound ancient, but our sun is around 4.6 billion years old. HP Tau could look at our sun and see its future. It’s on an evolutionary path similar to our neighborhood star. This is more than a pretty picture. “Hubble studied HP Tau as part of an investigation into protoplanetary disks, the disks of material around stars that coalesce into planets over millions of years,” said NASA. Distant stars can tell us about the history of planets closer to home.