Interstellar Clouds tagged posts

Noctilucent clouds were once thought to be a fairly modern phenomenon. A team of researchers recently calculated that Earth and the entire solar system may well have passed through two dense interstellar clouds, causing global noctilucent clouds that may have driven an ice age.

The event is thought to have happened 7 million years ago and would have compressed the heliosphere, exposing Earth to the interstellar medium.

Interstellar clouds are vast regions of gas and dust between the stars within galaxies. They are mostly made up of hydrogen along with a little helium and trace elements of heavier elements.

They are a key part of the life cycle of stars, providing the materials for new stars to be formed, and are seeded with elements after stars die...

Astronomers have captured new, detailed maps of three nearby interstellar gas clouds containing regions of ongoing high-mass star formation. The results of this survey, called the Star Formation Project, will help improve our understanding of the star formation process.

We know that stars such as the Sun are born from interstellar gas clouds. These interstellar gas clouds are difficult to observe in visible light, but emit strong radio wavelength, which can be observed by the Nobeyama 45-m Radio Telescope in Japan...