A Giant Mosaic
This mosaic image, one of the largest ever taken by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope of the Crab Nebula, is a six-light-year-wide expanding remnant of a star's supernova explosion. Japanese and Chinese astronomers witnessed this violent event nearly 1,000 years ago in 1054, as did, almost certainly, Native Americans. NASA, ESA, J. Hester (Arizona

The Hubble space telescope has long been a reliable source of astonishing images from across the universe, but they have always been static representations of a single moment in the life of a star or a nebula.

Until now.

By chronologically arranging images produced by Hubble, astronomers have been able to construct a sort of film reel illustrating the birth of stars. When a star bursts into existence it blasts jets of luminous gas into space at supersonic speeds, providing a vivid image for astronomers to study.

An international team of scientists led by astronomer Patrick Hartigan of Rice University in Houston compiled images of three stars, taken over a 14 year period, and used computer software to weave them together into short movies that demonstrate how the gas jets' structures eventually yield a star. Astronomers believe that the movies will offer clues about what our sun looked like when it formed some 4.5 billion years ago.

Taken together, our results paint a picture of jets as remarkably diverse objects that undergo highly structured interactions between material within the outflow and between the jet and the surrounding gas, Hartigan said in a NASA statement. This contrasts with the bulk of the existing simulations which depict jets as smooth systems.

Here are some of the incredible movies:

NASA NASA Video Space