The "windy cocoon," as researchers described it, emits the power of a billion Suns and gives researchers a glimpse of one type of starbirth thought to be more common in the early universe.
"We know of smaller wind bubbles around young stars in our own Milky Way, but this wind is far more powerful, with the potential to seriously disrupt its parent galaxy," said Jean L. Turner, a University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) professor who led the study.
In presenting the findings here at the annual meeting of the American Astronomical Society, the researchers said the wind is made up mostly of hydrogen gas zooming outward at 3,000 miles (4,830 kilometers) per hour. All normal stars generate winds of this sort, but the volume of material in this case creates an outwardly rushing bubble unlike anything seen before, the researchers said.
"These are not unusual speeds for stellar winds," said Lucian P. Crosthwaite, a UCLA graduate student. "But stellar winds normally involve only a little mass. This wind is exceptional because it is pushing a million Earth masses of gas."
The wind is kicked up from within a cloud that hides the star cluster, in a galaxy about 12 million light-years from Earth. Researchers figure the stars are very young, so young that they have not yet cleared away the cloud in which they were born.
The researchers say they were lucky to observe the short-lived phenomenon. At the current rate of expansion, they figure the event may not last more than 15,000 years.
The galaxy, called NGC 5253, is considered a dwarf galaxy and sits in the direction of the constellation Centaurus.
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