Scientists are turning to the beautiful and famous Whirlpool Galaxy to detect areas where stars could eventually be born.
Scientists are turning to the beautiful and famous Whirlpool Galaxy to look for areas where stars could eventually be born. By mapping out the presence of particular chemicals, they hope to learn about the conditions that are required to give birth to new stars.
Researchers have mapped out regions of cold gas within the Whirlpool Galaxy, as it is these pockets of gas that gradually condense to form the knots that are the seeds of new stars. These knots attract more dust and gas due to gravity until they eventually become dense enough to collapse into a hot core called a protostar.
“To investigate the early phases of star formation, where gas gradually condenses to eventually produce stars, we must first identify these regions,” explained lead author Sophia Stuber of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy (MPIA) in a statement.
