Latest Interstellar medium Stories

SWRI -- When Voyager 1 finally crossed the "termination shock" at the edge of interstellar space in December 2004, space physicists anticipated the long-sought discovery of the source of anomalous cosmic rays. These cosmic rays, among the most energetic particle radiation in the solar system, are thought to be produced at the termination shock - the boundary at the edge of the solar system where the million-mile-per-hour solar wind abruptly slows. A mystery unfolded instead when...

Berkeley -- Astronomers announced Thursday what may be the first discovery of a helical magnetic field in interstellar space, coiled like a snake around a gas cloud in the constellation of Orion. "You can think of this structure as a giant, magnetic Slinky wrapped around a long, finger-like interstellar cloud,'' said Timothy Robishaw, a graduate student in astronomy at the University of California, Berkeley. "The magnetic field lines are like stretched rubber bands; the tension...

Gemini Observatory -- A storm of billowing clouds blown by the winds from massive stars, and set aglow by their light, is the focus of a striking image released today by Gemini Observatory. Known as the N44 superbubble complex, this cloudy tempest is dominated by a vast bubble about 325 by 250 light-years across. A cluster of massive stars inside the cavern has cleared away gas to form a distinctive mouth-shaped hollow shell. While astronomers do not agree on exactly how this bubble has...

NASA -- Scientists using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory have witnessed a cosmic rite of passage, the transition from a supernova to a supernova remnant, a process that has never seen in much detail until now, leaving it poorly defined.A supernova is a massive star explosion; the remnant is the beautiful glowing shell that evolves afterwards. When does a supernova become supernova remnant? When does the shell appear and what powers its radiant glow?A science team led by Dr. Stefan Immler of...

NASA -- Intricate wisps of glowing gas float amid a myriad of stars in this image created by combining data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra X-ray Observatory. The gas is a supernova remnant, cataloged as N132D, ejected from the explosion of a massive star that occurred some 3,000 years ago. This titanic explosion took place in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a nearby neighbor galaxy of our own Milky Way.The complex structure of N132D is due to the expanding supersonic shock wave...

NASA's Voyager 1 has passed into the border region at the edge of the solar system and now is sending back information about this never-before-explored area, say scientists at the University of Maryland. "We have confirmed, for the first time, that Voyager 1 crossed the termination shock on Dec. 16, 2004," said Frank McDonald, a senior research scientist at the university's Institute for Physical Science and Technology, and a coauthor on two of four Voyager 1 papers published in the...

Chandra -- Astronomers have found compelling evidence that a supernova shock wave has produced a large amount of cosmic rays, particles of mysterious origin that constantly bombard the Earth. This discovery, made with NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory, supports theoretical arguments that shock waves from stellar explosions may be a primary source of cosmic rays.This finding is important for understanding the origin of cosmic rays, which are atomic nuclei that strike the Earth's atmosphere with...

COLUMBUS , Ohio -- Science fiction writer Harlan Ellison once said that the most common elements in the universe are hydrogen and stupidity. While the verdict is still out on the volume of stupidity, scientists have long known that hydrogen is indeed by far the most abundant element in the universe. When they peer through their telescopes, they see hydrogen in the vast clouds of dust and gas between stars -- especially in the denser regions that are collapsing to form new stars and planets....

The supernova remnant N 63A is a member of N 63, a star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC). Visible from the southern hemisphere, the LMC is an irregular galaxy lying 160,000 light-years from our own Milky Way galaxy. The LMC provides excellent examples of active star formation and supernova remnants, many of which have been studied with Hubble. Numerous of the stars in the immediate vicinity of N 63A are extremely massive. It is estimated that the 'mother-star', or...

ESA -- Measurements by the SWAN instrument onboard SOHO, have shown that the heliosphere, the solar wind filled volume which prevents the solar system from getting embedded in the local (ambient) interstellar medium is not axi-symmetrical, but is distorted, very likely under the effect of the local galactic magnetic field. From the measured distortion it is possible to determine the direction of this field, and future models will hopefully derive its intensity. This is the last missing...