Watch CBS News

Cosmic Light Saber Can Be Seen By NASA Telescope

GREENBELT, Md. (WJZ) -- Call it product placement on a cosmic scale.

Alex DeMetrick reports, just as the latest Star Wars movie opens, NASA unveils a light saber star.

From the control room in Maryland, experts at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center direct the Hubble Space telescope, which has spotted something very interesting in our own Milky Way galaxy.

"The is a new neighbor in the Milky War, but it would still take us 1,400 year traveling at the speed of light to even get there," said Dr. Padi Boyd, of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

It's called a Proto Star.

At 100,000 years old it is still forming out of gas and dust -- gravity squeezing and spinning it.

"And then out of the poles material can shoot at supersonic speeds," Boyd said. "So what we're seeing are two twin jets coming out of the north and south rotational poles of the stars that look like a double-bladed light saber."

The movie version is getting a lot of play with the newest Star Wars movie.

The cosmic variety has a lot more force.

Each light saber or jet is over 900 billion miles long.

The star is in the infant stages of creating its own solar system, it's the kind of knowledge Hubble specializes in.

"I think that's one of the things Hubble has always done so well. It's really allowed us to place ourselves in context of the evolution of the universe," Boyd added. "So really being able to peer in on this very proto planetary discs and start to pick out the processes of how planetary systems are formed, gives us a lot of insight of where we come from and where we're going."

The Hubble space telescope is now into its 25th year and it still going strong.

View CBS News In
CBS News App Open
Chrome Safari Continue
Be the first to know
Get browser notifications for breaking news, live events, and exclusive reporting.