# @nasa on Instagram

- **Type:** Image
- **Original URL:** https://www.instagram.com/p/CnIAcEXLqyG
- **Gondola URL:** https://gondola.cc/posts/3017094-nasa-instagram
- **Thumbnail:** https://img.gondola.cc/tr:w-,h-,fo-auto/postThumbnails/14a70b4fe4.jpg
- **Posted:** 2023-01-07T19:07:41.000+00:00
- **Account Owner:** NASA (@NASA) — https://gondola.cc/NASA

## Caption

So, NGC 3293, tell me, how was your life as a youngster? ⭐

Astronomers are piecing together the chaotic nature of young stars. Using data from nasachandraxray and ESA’s Gaia mission, scientists evaluated how boisterous X-ray emissions from young stars could damage or destroy the atmospheres of planets orbiting them. 

Young star clusters, such as this one located about 8,300 light-years away in the Milky Way galaxy, may only be 11 million years old, but could pose a threat to planetary atmospheres in their own solar systems. Unruly magnetically active young stars disrupt the formation processes of planets in the disk of gas and dust that surround them by quickly clearing away their disks—halting the growth of planets.

This activity also affects the habitability of the planets that emerge after the disk has disappeared. If a star is extremely active, then scientists predict it will blast planets in its system with a high-energy barrage of X-rays and ultraviolet light that could cause a planet to lose much of its original, hydrogen-rich atmosphere within a few million years. It might also strip away a carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere that forms later, unless it is protected by a magnetic field—like our own that prevented such an outcome for Earth.

Image description: A distant star cluster resembles a cone of bright stars and wispy, rose-colored clouds, set against a starry sky. The narrow point of the cone-shaped cloud rests in the center of the image. The narrow end of the cone shape features dozens of large, bright, gleaming stars in blues, purples, whites, and reds. A rose-colored cloud, reminiscent of cotton candy, creates the widening middle and top of the cone shape. The background of the image is packed with stars and specks of light in the same blues, purples, whites, and reds. Hints of a thin blue cloud appear to the left, dotted with soft dabs of red.

Credit: NASA/CXC/Penn State Univ./K. Getman et al.; Infrared: ESA/NASA JPL-Caltech/Herschel Space Observatory/JPL/IPAC; NASA JPL-Caltech/SSC/Spitzer Space Telescope; Optical: MPG/ESO/G. Beccari

#NASA #Space #ChandraXray #Star #Cosmos #Galaxy #Atmosphere

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## Tags

cosmos, nasa, star, space, atmosphere, galaxy, chandraxray

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