A spectacular image from ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory shows an intricate network of gas filaments and dark bubbles in a massive star-forming region in the plane of the Milky Way.
Chaotic web of gas filaments and dark bubbles in a Milky Way stellar nursery. Image credit: ESA / Herschel / PACS / SPIRE / Hi-GAL Project / UNIMAP / L. Piazzo, La Sapienza – Università di Roma / E. Schisano / G. Li Causi, IAPS & INAF.
The stellar nursery in this Herschel image, centered around minus 70 degrees longitude in Galactic coordinates, resides in the Carina neighborhood, home to the famous Carina Nebula.
Located some 7,500 light-years away, Carina is one of the largest clouds of gas and dust in the plane of the Milky Way. It hosts Eta Carinae, one of the most luminous and massive stellar systems in our Galaxy.
The cooler regions in this scene — which emit light at longer wavelengths — are displayed in a red-brownish color.
Hotter areas, where star formation is more intense, shine in blue and white tones.
Some areas are particularly bright, suggesting a number of luminous, massive stars are forming there.
Particularly striking is the chaotic web of gas filaments we see in this image.
Astronomers think there is a link between star formation and the filamentary structures in the interstellar medium.
In the densest strands, the gas that makes up the filaments becomes unstable and forms clumps of material bound together by gravity.
If dense enough, these collapsed blobs of gas eventually go on to become newborn stars.
Observations by Herschel showed the filamentary complexity to be ubiquitous in the plane of our Galaxy, from a few to hundreds of light-years.
In nearby star-forming clouds, within 1,500 light-years of the Sun, these filaments seem to be roughly all the same width — about a third of a light-year.
This suggests a common physical mechanism in their origin, possibly linked to the turbulent nature of interstellar gas clouds.
