(ORDO NEWS) — An international team of astronomers has obtained new data on the process of star formation by studying the structure of gas clouds in the Cygnus X region.
The study completely disproved the popular theory that the process of forming stars from molecular hydrogen is very long.
Scientists have studied the area where numerous stars are formed.
The source of material for their formation is gas clouds, which consist of dense molecular hydrogen and an atomic shell.
The so-called Cygnus X region itself is a vast, luminous cloud of gas and dust located about 5,000 light-years from Earth. Until recently, it was believed that the process of star formation occurs there very slowly.
Now, however, scientists have learned data indicating that the interaction of sources of material for stars occurs, on the contrary, extremely quickly and dynamically.
For analysis, data were taken from the now “retired” flying observatory SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy). The measurements were carried out in the infrared spectrum.
The results obtained, as the authors of the work assure, completely change the previous ideas that the specific process of star formation is quasi-static and rather slow.
Astronomers have found that the shells of interstellar gas clouds are made of hydrogen and collide with each other at speeds up to twenty kilometers per second.
Using spectral line observations of ionized carbon (CII), they also determined that the clouds themselves formed in just a few million years, a very fast process by cosmic standards.
New data also made it possible to explain the phenomenon of the formation of the most massive stars.
“The high velocity compresses the gas into denser molecular regions where new, mostly massive stars are formed,” says Dr Nicola Schneider of the University of Cologne.
“We needed CII observations to detect ‘dark’ gas.” The observations revealed for the first time a weak CII emission from the periphery of the clouds, which had not been observed before.
Only SOFIA and its sensitive instruments have been able to detect this radiation.”
The SOFIA observatory was operated until September 2022. It was a converted Boeing 747 aircraft with a built-in 2.7-meter telescope.
SOFIA observed the sky from the stratosphere, that is, from a height of more than 13 kilometers.
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