star formation tagged posts

A Hubble image of a field of distant galaxies. A new study of the gas content in galaxies so distant their light has been traveling for about ten billion years suggests that the processes converting gas into stars is about the same back then as in the local universe. NASA, ESA, G. Illingworth (UCO/Lick & UCSC), R. Bouwens (UCO/Lick & Leiden U.), and the HUDF09 Team

The first stars appeared ~100 million years after the big bang, and ever since then stars and star formation processes have lit up the cosmos. When the universe was about 3 billion years old, star formation activity peaked at rates about 10 times above current levels...

An artist’s impression shows a very distant quasar powered by a black hole with a mass two billion times that of the Sun. CREDIT: ESO/M. KORNMESSER

Astronomers have linked extremely reddened quasars to strong galactic outflowing winds that inhibit star formation in the early universe. Galaxies formed and grew billions of years ago by accumulating gas from their surroundings, or colliding and merging with other young galaxies. These early stages of galaxy assembly are believed to be accompanied by episodes of rapid star formation, known as starbursts, and rapid growth of a single super-massive black hole in the galactic centers.

A popular paradigm for this evolution has the black holes growing mostly in obscurity, buried deep within the dusty gas...

A deep optical image of the gas-rich galaxy GASS 3505 which in at radio wavelengths shows a ring of neutral hydrogen gas, probably a result of accretion (there is a faint streamer seen to the left in this image). Astronomers conclude that the star formation in this object is very weak, less than about 0.1 solar-masses per year. Credit: Gereb et al. 2016

Cold gas in the form of neutral hydrogen atoms provides the reservoir for star formation in galaxies from the distant to the nearby Universe. Understanding how it accretes onto galaxies is of crucial importance because fresh supplies of gas fuel the ongoing star-forming...

Galaxies IC 2163 (left) and NGC 2207 (right) recently grazed past each other, triggering a tsunami of stars and gas in IC 2163 and producing the dazzling eyelid-like features there. ALMA image of carbon monoxide (orange), which revealed motion of the gas in these features, is shown on top of Hubble image (blue) of the galaxy pair. Credit: M. Kaufman; B. Saxton (NRAO/AUI/NSF); ALMA (ESO/NAOJ/NRAO); NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope

Astronomers using ALMA have discovered a tsunami of stars and gas that is crashing midway through the disk of a spiral galaxy known as IC 2163. This colossal wave of material – which was triggered when IC 2163 recently sideswiped another spiral galaxy NGC 2207 – produced dazzling arcs of intense star formation that resemble a pair of eyelids...