Saurabh Sharma

At the center of a cosmic dust cloud, astronomers detected an invisible star. It's wrapped in a rotating gas disk. This disk works like a set of scales: the gas speed at different distances from the center reveals the star’s mass. The pattern is simple: the closer to the center, the faster the motion.

In the dark cloud G351, where new stars are about to emerge from gas and dust, the magnetic field has bent into an hourglass shape. Such a shape is a sign that the field is not just watching star birth from the sidelines but is actively taking part. Scientists used the SOFIA telescope, mounted on an airplane, to see the dust in the cloud.