I don’t believe it’s the kind of process that would happen within the span of a single persons lifetime.

No, the timescales are too long.

see eg: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protostar and this graph for protostars reaching the main sequence.

Footage? There are many images of star forming nebulae and galaxies with oodles of blue (new) stars.

But if you're looking for some quasi-cellphone video of someone taking some video of a star being formed you're in for some disappointment.

The timescales are, to use the word hyperbolically, ASTRONOMICAL. No, there's no footage of star formation. If you have a telescope, like I do, point it towards Betelgeuse. The Hand of Orion.

If current theories are correct, then stars originate in the middle of giant gas clouds. We won't be able to see the birth of a star simply because the gas is in the way and obfuscates what's happening within.

Funny thing is, when Betelgeuse goes supernova, folks seem to think it will go BOOM like the Death Star. No, more like it will get slowly brighter of the course of a couple weeks to a month. Plus, it's probably not going to happen for another 10,000 years at least.

This is probably one of the best images, in terms of something that makes sense to the human eye.

There's many newer and better ones from a scientific standpoint, but they're all false-color and very "computery" looking. And often have a big blocked circle in the center to keep the light from the protostar from washing out the disk around it that may be forming planets.

It's a protostar and gas & dust disk with a backdrop of the Orion nebula. It's sort of what you'd see if you were in a spaceship parked a light year away or so, in a dark cabin with a big window.

Protostar and protoplanetary disk.

The dark black donut is the protostellar and protoplanetary disk. The red glow in the center is either the protostar in the center, lit from its collapse, or a newly born star that's ignited main-sequence fusion, and hasn't yet pushed the disk away out into space with light and stellar wind.

The black donut is probably much bigger than the orbit of Neptune in our own Solar System. The time-scale to see the process would be much longer than any semblance of recorded human history.

Although, it's roughly what your eyes would see in that spaceship cabin with the big window... if you had eyeballs the size of grapefruit, like a Japanese cartoon Anime girl, and could stare perfectly still for several minutes or hours and build up an image without blinking, or otherwise spazzing out and going all doki-doki bakka over the need to confess your love for senpai... and maybe some ultraviolet and near-infrared light thrown in.

Hello u/CantSpellverygood, your submission "Birth of a star footage?" has been removed from r/space because:

• Such questions should be asked in the "All space questions" thread stickied at the top of the sub.

Please read the rules in the sidebar and check r/space for duplicate submissions before posting. If you have any questions about this removal please message the r/space moderators. Thank you.

Agreed. But we can point our hobby telescopes skyward. And look at photons that were born, BILLIONS of years ago.