star formation Archives

July 7, 2021July 7, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

One of the Brightest Star-Forming Regions in the Milky Way, Seen in Infrared

Certain parts of the galaxy are more magical than others. There are barren wastelands where barely a particle strays through occasionally, and there are fantastical nebulae that can literally light up the sky. But beyond their good looks, those nebulae hold secrets to understanding some of the most important features of any galaxy – stars. Now, for the first time, a team from the University of Maryland managed to capture a high resolution image of one of the most active star-forming regions in our part of the galaxy. Data from that image are not only spectacular, but can illuminate the details of the star formation process.

June 16, 2021June 16, 2021 by Brian Koberlein

Black Holes don't Just Destroy, They Also Help With Star Formation

A simulation of gas within the Milky Way. Credit: TNG Collaboration/Dylan Nelson

Black holes are the most powerful destructive forces in the universe. They can rip apart a star and scatter its ashes out of the galaxy at nearly the speed of light. But these engines of destruction can also pave the way for new stars to form, as a new study in Nature shows.

June 7, 2021June 7, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

Star Formation Begins When Clouds of Gas Crash Into Each Other

another seyfert galaxy — The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope has captured this vivid image of spiral galaxy Messier 77 — a galaxy in the constellation of Cetus, some 45 million light-years away from us. The streaks of red and blue in the image highlight pockets of star formation along the pinwheeling arms, with dark dust lanes stretching across the galaxy’s starry centre. The galaxy belongs to a class of galaxies known as Seyfert galaxies, which have highly ionised gas surrounding an intensely active centre.

To trigger star formation, you need to compress a lot of gas into not a lot of volume. To make a lot of stars at once, you need to really pack it in. Until now, astronomers haven’t been sure how to pull this off. But a collection of 20 papers outlines how to do it: make giant clouds of gas crash into each other.

April 5, 2021April 4, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

There are new Stars Forming Near the Core of the Milky Way Despite the Harsh Environment

ALMA pseudo-color composite image of the gas outflows from baby stars in the Galactic Center region. Gas moving toward us is shown in blue and gas moving away from us is shown in red. Credit: ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), Lu et al

The central core of our galaxy is not a friendly place for star formation, and yet new observations have revealed almost four dozen newly-forming systems. These results challenge our understanding of the complicated physics of our galactic heart.

March 26, 2021March 26, 2021 by Scott Alan Johnston

Newly Forming Stars Don’t Blast Away Material as Previously Believed. So Why Do They Stop Growing?

We thought we understood how stars are formed. It turns out, we don’t. Not completely, anyway. A new study, recently conducted using data from the Hubble Space Telescope, is sending astronomers back to the drawing board to rewrite the accepted model of stellar formation.

February 26, 2021February 26, 2021 by Andy Tomaswick

The Core Of The Milky Way Is An Extreme Place

Astronomers always like to look at incredibly violent places. Violence, in the astronomical sense, makes for rare conditions that can explain much about our universe. One of the violent places that astronomers love to study is the center of our Milky Way galaxy. Now, astronomers from the Center for Astrophysics (CfA) at Harvard have come up with a new catalogue of some of the most intense areas near the galactic core. They hope it will increase our understanding of these potential star-forming regions – and help explain why so few stars are actually formed in them.

February 5, 2021February 5, 2021 by Evan Gough

Astronomers Can Predict When a Galaxy’s Star Formation Ends Based on the Shape and Size of its Disk

An ensemble of twenty-five disk galaxies. The view on the left shows light emitted in the H-alpha line from interstellar gas as a result of ongoing star-formation, while the panels on the right shows the optical light emitted by a mix of young (bluer) and old (redder) stars. Each galaxy can be seen rotated edge-on below its face-on view. Image Credit: TNG Collaboration

A galaxy’s main business is star formation. And when they’re young, like youth everywhere, they keep themselves busy with it. But galaxies age, evolve, and experience a slow-down in their rate of star formation. Eventually, galaxies cease forming new stars altogether, and astronomers call that quenching. They’ve been studying quenching for decades, yet much about it remains a mystery.

A new study based on the IllustrisTNG simulations has found a link between a galaxy’s quenching and its stellar size.

February 1, 2021February 1, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

Galaxy Mergers can Boost Star Formation, and it can Also Shut it Down

It is known today that merging galaxies play a large role in the evolution of galaxies and the formation of elliptical galaxies in particular. However there are only a few merging systems close enough to be observed in depth. The pair of interacting galaxies picture seen here — known as NGC 3921 — is one of these systems. NGC 3921 — found in the constellation of Ursa Major (The Great Bear) — is an interacting pair of disc galaxies in the late stages of its merger. Observations show that both of the galaxies involved were about the same mass and collided about 700 million years ago. You can see clearly in this image the disturbed morphology, tails and loops characteristic of a post-merger. The clash of galaxies caused a rush of star formation and previous Hubble observations showed over 1000 bright, young star clusters bursting to life at the heart of the galaxy pair.

Galaxy mergers are beautiful sights, but ultimately deadly. In the midst of the collision, the combined galaxy will shine brighter than it ever has before. But that glory comes with a price: all those new stars use up all the available fuel, and star formation grinds to a halt.

January 19, 2021January 19, 2021 by Evan Gough

This is a Simulation of the Interstellar Medium Flowing Like Smoke Throughout the Milky Way

The figure shows a section through the cube of the turbulence simulation. The colors show the density contrast relative to the mean density of the gas. Its turbulent structure is clearly recognizable. Image Credit: Federrath et al, 2021.

How do stars form?

We know they form from massive structures called molecular clouds, which themselves form from the Interstellar Medium (ISM). But how and why do certain types of stars form? Why, in some situations, does a star like our Sun form, versus a red dwarf or a blue giant?

That’s one of the central questions in astronomy. It’s also a very complex one.

January 11, 2021January 11, 2021 by Paul M. Sutter

This is the Fireworks Galaxy. It’s had ten Supernovae in the Last Century Alone

NGC 6946, also known as the Fireworks Galaxy due to the stupendous number of active supernovae. Image credit: ESA/Hubble & NASA, A. Leroy, K.S. Long

Say hello to NGC 6946, otherwise known as the Fireworks Galaxy. This little galaxy is the most prolific producer of supernovae in the known universe, popping off those incredible explosions roughly once a decade. It’s secret? An incredibly high rate of star formation.