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    Perseus molecular cloud tagged posts

    Spitzer studies a Stellar Playground with a Long History

    December 22, 2019, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    A collection of gas and dust over 500 light-years across, the Perseus Molecular Cloud hosts an abundance of young stars. It was imaged here by the NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

    This image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope shows the Perseus Molecular Cloud, a massive collection of gas and dust that stretches over 500 light-years across. Home to an abundance of young stars, it has drawn the attention of astronomers for decades.

    Spitzer’s Multiband Imaging Photometer (MIPS) instrument took this image during Spitzer’s “cold mission,” which ran from the spacecraft’s launch in 2003 until 2009, when the space telescope exhausted its supply of liquid helium coolant. (This marked the beginning of Spitzer’s “warm mission...

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    Low-mass Stars always Born with a Sibling: Many, like our sun, split up

    June 15, 2017, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    1. A radio image of a triple star system forming within a dusty disk in the Perseus molecular cloud obtained by the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile. Credit: Bill Saxton, ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO), NRAO/AUI/NSF 2. Radio image of a very young binary star system, less than about 1 million years old, that formed within a dense core (oval outline) in the Perseus molecular cloud. All stars likely form as binaries within dense cores. Credit: SCUBA-2 survey image by Sarah Sadavoy, CfA

    Did our sun have a twin when it was born 4.5 billion years ago? Almost certainly yes – though not an identical twin...

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    The Minimum Mass of a Proto-Solar System Disk

    October 19, 2015, Categories  Astronomy/Space

    The minimum mass of a proto-solar system disk

    An image of the young star forming region IC348 in Perseus (about 2-3 million years old) as seen by the infrared cameras onboard the Spitzer Space Telescope. Astronomers studying the birth of solar systems have found thirteen stars in this complex with detectable disks, none of which is as massive as the early Solar system’s disk. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Muzerolle (STScI), E. Furlan (NOAO and Caltech), K. Flaherty (Univ. of Arizona/Steward Observatory), Z. Balog (Max Planck Institute for Astronomy), and R. Gutermuth (Univ. of Massachusetts, Amherst) Read more at: http://phys.org/news/2015-10-minimum-mass-proto-solar-disk.html#jCp

    Astronomers estimate that at the time Solar system formed, its proto-planetary disk contained the equivalent of about 20 Jupiter-masses of gas and dust...

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