Latest Molecular cloud Stories

[Watch Videos: 1 - Zooming in on Lupus 3 / 2 - Panning Over Lupus 3] Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Southern Observatory (ESO) released a stunning new image of a dark cloud where new stars are forming, along with a cluster of brilliant stars that have already emerged from the stellar nursery. The new image, taken with MPG/ESO 2.2-meter telescope at La Silla Observatory in Chile, is one of the finest and clearest ever taken in visible light of...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A team from Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) has observed the earliest stages of star formation using the European Space Agency's Herschel Space Observatory. The astronomers were able to produce a three-dimensional map of the molecular cloud B68, a possible birthplace for a low-mass star. They managed to also identify a previously unobserved class of object that could be the earliest known precursor of the birth of massive...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Astronomers using a telescope at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan have discovered a molecular cloud that has a peculiar helical structure. The team, led by Shinji Matsumura, a second year Ph. D. candidate, named it a "pigtail" molecular cloud due to its morphology. The pigtail molecular cloud is located in the galactic center, about 30,000 light years away from the solar system. Giant molecular clouds found in this...

Lee Rannals (http://blogs.redorbit.com/author/rannals/) for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A new image taken by the European Space Agency’s Herschel space observatory, shows off two nebulous blue orbs in the Vela C region. Vela C is one of four regions known as the Vela Molecular Ridge, which is a complex of gas and dust located 2,300 light-years from Earth and weighing about 500,000 times the mass of the sun. The image shows the interplay between gravity and turbulence in the...

ESA’s Planck mission has revealed that our Galaxy contains previously undiscovered islands of cold gas and a mysterious haze of microwaves. These results give scientists new treasure to mine and take them closer to revealing the blueprint of cosmic structure. The new results are being presented this week at an international conference in Bologna, Italy, where astronomers from around the world are discussing the mission’s intermediate results. These results include the first map of...

Led by University of Illinois astronomy professor Tony Wong, the researchers published their findings in the December issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a popular galaxy among astronomers both for its nearness to our Milky Way and for the spectacular view it provides, a big-picture vista impossible to capture of our own galaxy. “If you imagine a galaxy being a disc, the LMC is tilted almost face-on so we can look down on it, which...

The Milky Way will have the fuel to continue forming stars, thanks to massive clouds of ionized gas raining down from its halo and intergalactic space. This is the conclusion of a new study by Nicolas Lehner and Christopher Howk, faculty in the Department of Physics at the University of Notre Dame. Their report, "A Reservoir of Ionized Gas in the Galactic Halo to Sustain Star Formation in the Milky Way," is published in Science August 26. Using the Cosmic Origins Spectrograph, one of the...

By Robert Sanders, University of California, BerkeleyAn unusual galaxy with gas jets could explain how starforming galaxies become red and deadUniversity of California, Berkeley, astronomers may have found the missing link between gas-filled, star-forming galaxies and older, gas-depleted galaxies typically characterized as "red and dead."In a poster to be presented this week at the American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle, UC Berkeley astronomers report that a long-known...

A new infrared image from ESO's VISTA survey telescope reveals an extraordinary landscape of glowing tendrils of gas, dark clouds and young stars within the constellation of Monoceros (the Unicorn). This star-forming region, known as Monoceros R2, is embedded within a huge dark cloud. The region is almost completely obscured by interstellar dust when viewed in visible light, but is spectacular in the infrared.An active stellar nursery lies hidden inside a massive dark cloud rich in molecules...

A wave of massive star formation appears poised to begin within a mysterious, dark cloud in the Milky Way.  NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope  has revealed a secluded birthplace for stars within a wispy, dark cloud named M17 SWex. The dark cloud is part of the larger, parent nebula known as M17, a vast region of our galaxy with a bright, central star cluster. "We believe we've managed to observe this dark cloud in a very early phase of star formation before its most massive stars have...