Chandra Release - June 18, 2020

Visual Description: HOPS 383

The main panel of this graphic contains an artist's illustration that depicts an object where astronomers discovered an X-ray flare. HOPS 383 is called a young "protostar" because it is in the earliest phase of stellar evolution that occurs right after a large cloud of gas and dust has started to collapse. Once it has matured HOPS 383, which is located about 1,400 light years from Earth, will have a mass about half that of the Sun. The illustration shows HOPS 383 surrounded by a donut-shaped cocoon of fluffy material (colored in dark patchy brown) - containing about half of the protostar's mass - that is falling in towards a central star. Much of the light from the infant star in HOPS 383 is unable to pierce through this cocoon, but X-rays from the flare (blue color around the center) are powerful enough to do so. Infrared light emitted by HOPS 383 is scattered off the inside of the cocoon (colored white and yellow, looking like an internal glow). The X-ray flare is colored in blue. The data of this flare detected by observations from the Chandra X-ray Observatory taken in December 2017 is shown in the inset at upper right. This result may reset the timeline for when astronomers think Sun-like stars start blasting X-rays into space.