star birth tagged posts

Black Holes Help with Star Birth

Virtual milky way: Gas density around a massive central galaxy in a group in the virtual universe of the TNG50 simulation. Gas inside the galaxy corresponds to the bright vertical structure: a gaseous disk. To the left and right of that structure… [more]
© TNG Collaboration/Dylan Nelson

The cosmic mass monsters clear the way for the formation of new suns in satellite galaxies. Research combining systematic observations with cosmological simulations has found that, surprisingly, black holes can help certain galaxies form new stars. On scales of galaxies, the role of supermassive black holes for star formation had previously been seen as destructive — active black holes can strip galaxies of the gas that galaxies need to form new stars...

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Star’s Birth may have Triggered another Star Birth, astronomers say

Protostar FIR 3 (HOPS 370) with outflow that may have triggered the formation of younger protostar FIR 4 (HOPS 108, location marked with red dot), in the Orion star-forming region. (au = astronomical unit, the distance from the Earth to the Sun, about 93 million miles.) Credit: Osorio et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF

Protostar FIR 3 (HOPS 370) with outflow that may have triggered the formation of younger protostar FIR 4 (HOPS 108, location marked with red dot), in the Orion star-forming region. (au = astronomical unit, the distance from the Earth to the Sun, about 93 million miles.)
Credit: Osorio et al., NRAO/AUI/NSF

Youngerstar is in path of outflow from older. Astronomers using the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) have found new evidence suggesting that a jet of fast-moving material ejected from one young star may have triggered the formation of another, younger protostar. “The orientation of the jet, the speed of its material, and the distance all are right for this scenario,” said Mayra Osorio, of the Astrophysical Institute of Andalucia (IAA-CSIC) in Spain.

The scientists studied a giant clo...

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Hubble View of Starburst Galaxy Messier 94

Galaxy Messier 94

Galaxy Messier 94 Image credit: ESA/NASA

Galaxy Messier 94, which lies in the small northern constellation of the Hunting Dogs, about 16 million light-years away. Within the bright ring or starburst ring around Messier 94, new stars are forming at a high rate and many young, bright stars are present within it.

The cause of this peculiarly shaped star-forming region is likely a pressure wave going outwards from the galactic center, compressing the gas and dust in the outer region. The compression of material means the gas starts to collapse into denser clouds. Inside these dense clouds, gravity pulls the gas and dust together until temperature and pressure are high enough for stars to be born.
http://www.nasa.gov/image-feature/goddard/a-hubble-view-of-starburst-galaxy-messier-94


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Hubble Survey Unlocks Clues to Star Birth in neighbor Andromeda Galaxy

[Top] -- This is a Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of 414 photographs of the nearest major galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy (M31). The vast panorama was assembled from nearly 8,000 separate exposures taken in near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. Embedded within this view are 2,753 star clusters. The view is 61,600 light-years across and contains images of 117 million stars in the galaxy's disk. [Bottom-Left] - An enlargement of the boxed field in the top image reveals myriad stars and numerous open star clusters as bright blue knots. Hubble's bird's-eye view of M31 allowed astronomers to conduct a larger-than-ever sampling of star clusters that are all at the same distance from Earth, 2.5 million light-years. The view is 4,400 light-years across. [Bottom-Right] - This is a view of six bright blue clusters extracted from the field. Hubble astronomers discovered that, nature apparently cooks up stars with a consistent distribution from massive blue supergiant stars to small red dwarf stars. This remains a constant across the galaxy, despite the fact that the clusters vary in mass by a factor of 10 and range in age from 4 million to 24 million years old. Each cluster square is 150 light-years across. Credit: NASA, ESA, J. Dalcanton, B.F. Williams, and L.C. Johnson (University of Washington), the PHAT team, and R. Gendler

[Top] — This is a Hubble Space Telescope mosaic of 414 photographs of the nearest major galaxy to our Milky Way galaxy, the Andromeda galaxy (M31). The vast panorama was assembled from nearly 8,000 separate exposures taken in near-ultraviolet, visible, and near-infrared light. Embedded within this view are 2,753 star clusters. The view is 61,600 light-years across and contains images of 117 million stars in the galaxy’s disk. [Bottom-Left] – An enlargement of the boxed field in the top image reveals myriad stars and numerous open star clusters as bright blue knots. Hubble’s bird’s-eye view of M31 allowed astronomers to conduct a larger-than-ever sampling of star clusters that are all at the same distance from Earth, 2.5 million light-years. The view is 4,400 light-years across...

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