gas conditions in the Milky Way tagged posts

CSIRO’s Compact Array in Australia is shown under the night lights of the Milky Way. Credit: Alex Cherney

Invisible structures shaped like noodles, lasagne sheets or hazelnuts could be floating around in our Galaxy radically challenging our understanding of gas conditions in the Milky Way. Astronomers say the structures appear to be ‘lumps’ in the thin gas that lies between the stars in our Galaxy.”They could radically change ideas about this interstellar gas, which is the Galaxy’s star recycling depot, housing material from old stars that will be refashioned into new ones,” Dr Bannister said.

Dr Bannister and his colleagues described breakthrough observations of one of these ‘lumps’ that have allowed them to make the first estimate of its shape...