T Tauri Stars

Before settling onto the main sequence, young stars go through a turbulent adolescence as T Tauri stars. These pre-main-sequence objects are wrapped in swirling disks of gas and dust — the raw material for future planets. They are highly variable, brightening and dimming as material from the disk falls onto them.

Powerful stellar winds push material away, while jets shoot from the poles at hundreds of kilometers per second. The surrounding disk slowly clears over a few million years as its material falls onto the star, is blown away, or clumps into planetesimals, the building blocks of planets.