AFGL 2591 is visible as the bright red object at the centre of this infrared image. The wispy white and blue structure to the right is material flowing out into the surrounding nebula.(Image: Gemini Observatory/PPARC/Colin Aspin). The Gemini North telescope on the island of Hawaii has obtained a striking image of gas being expelled from a young massive star.

The star, named AFGL 2591 is located 3,000 light years from the Sun inside a dense cloud of molecular hydrogen and dust. This renders it invisible to a conventional optical telescope. However Gemini observes infrared light which easily penetrates the cloud and provides direct images of its interior.

AFGL 2591 is 20,000 times as luminous as the Sun, at least 10 times as large and only around 1 million years old – positively youthful by stellar standards. The blue and white structure to the right of the young star is a huge outflow of gas and dust produced as material falls on to the star's surface and is driven out into space. The Gemini astronomers believe that it is one half of a symmetrical 'bipolar' outflow with the other part hidden by a dense disk encircling the star.

'A unique feature of this object is a series of four distinct rings of nebulosity. These rings suggest that the expulsion of the material is not constant with time, but rather has occurred several times over the lifetime of the object,' says Colin Aspin at the Gemini International Headquarters in Hawaii.

The image is part of the final commissioning process for the Gemini Near Infrared Imager, the prime telescope instrument which will be fully operational later this year. Dr Patrick Roche, the UK Gemini Project Scientist based at Oxford University commented, 'This result provides an excellent example of the infrared images delivered by the Gemini telescope.'