The giant and brilliant gas cloud discovered only 300 light years away
A huge bright cloud containing approximately 3,400 gas masses near the solar system has been discovered
A cloud of medium -shaped gas has been seen on the edge of the so -called local bubble, which is shown here in the illustration of this artist that also highlights the formation of stars that occurs on the surface of the bubble.
The surprise discovery of a huge molecular gas cloud, the things that form stars, only 300 light years away, is opening new ways of studying the conditions that allow childbirth in the stars.
Stars way to collapse molecular gas clouds. We see this in the tastes of the Orion nebulawhich is energized by hot ultraviolet radiation of young stars born inside. However, find molecular clouds before They start producing stars is more difficult.
These clouds are predominantly made of molecular hydrogen gas, which, when it is not being energized by the light of the stars, is very weak, almost invisible. (Atomic hydrogen, on the other hand, is easily detectable by radio telescopes). Astronomers generally use radio telescopes to detect carbon monoxide, which is available in much lower quantities in molecular clouds, such as proxy.
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But what about the clouds without much carbon monoxide?
Astronomers led by Blakesley Burkhart of the University of Rutgers: New Brunswick in New Jersey and Thavisha Dharmawardena of the University of New York, have been pioneers in a completely new way of seeing the invisible. Using distant ultraviolet data from the Korean satellite STSAT-1, hydrogen fluorescation molecules directly detected.
“This is the first molecular cloud in seeking the emission of molecular hydrogen of the ultraviolet distant directly,” Burkhart said in a statement. “This cloud is literally shining in the dark.”
Scientists have discovered a potentially stars forming cloud, now called EOS, which is one of the largest individual structures in the sky and among those closest to the sun and the earth detected.
Thomas Müller (HDA/Mppia) and Thavisha Dharmawardena (NYU)
The cloud has a more or less medium -sized shape and sits on the edge of the Bubblewhich is a volume of space where the interstellar medium is weirder than its surroundings, perhaps after having been emptied by the waves of hundreds of old supernovae. The sun and our solar system are going through the local bubble, and have been doing it during the last five million years or so.
The cloud, called EOS after the goddess of Greek mythology that meant the dawn, contains approximately 3,400 Solar masses gas value. It is also exhausted in carbon monoxide, so it was not detected by conventional means.
It is predicted that EOS will disperse, or photodisociate, as a result of background photons that affect the cloud molecules, in approximately 5.7 million years. This is too early to start forming stars, unless there is some other trigger that advances things, such as the gravitational disturbance of another cloud that happens. Interestingly, the average rate of stars formation in the neighborhood of our Sun has been calculated in 200 solar masses for million years. Eos is losing mass wider interstellar half At a rate of 600 solar masses per million years, three times the rate at which molecular gas becomes stars. Therefore, this dispersion of the molecular clouds as a result of the photodisociation of the light emitted by the nearby stars seems to act as a feedback mechanism to regulate the stars formation rate, believes Burkhart’s team. This is useful information to tell us more about the necessary conditions to allow the formation of stars in other more distant clouds.
“When we look through our telescopes, we understand everything Solar systems In the act of forming, but we don’t know in detail how that happens, “said Burkhart.” Our discovery of EOS is exciting because now we can directly measure how the molecular clouds are being formed and dissociated, and how a galaxy Start transforming gas and dust interstellar into stars and planets. “
And the discovery of other similar clouds could be right on the horizon.
“The use of the distant ultraviolet fluorescence emission technique could rewrite our understanding of the interstellar environment, discovering hidden clouds throughout the galaxy and even the most detectable limits of cosmic dawn,” said Dharmawardena.
It is possible that Eos does not see the dawn of the new stars, but its existence is testimony of a larger dawn, which returns to the beginning of the universe, in which the stars have brought the daylight to a dark cosmos.
The findings were published on April 28 in the magazine Astronomy of Nature.
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