The free-floating Evaporating Gaseous Globules (frEGGs) are the recently-discovered class of star-forming nurseries.
This Hubble image shows frEGGs J203441.7+405216, compact globules of interstellar dust and gas located in the constellation of Cygnus. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. Sahai, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory / Gladys Kober, NASA & Catholic University of America.
frEGGs are compact globules of interstellar dust and gas within which low-mass stars are being born.
These very rare objects were first identified in Hubble images of the Eagle Nebula in 1995.
They have very long tails and are approximately 100 AU (astronomical units) across.
They are being photoevaporated more slowly than their lower density surroundings, and so are left behind as the gas around them is driven off.
“Because these lumps of gas are dark, they are rarely seen by telescopes,” the Hubble astronomers said.
“They can be observed when the newly forming stars ignite, their intense ultraviolet radiation eroding the surrounding gas away and letting the denser, more resistant frEGGs remain.”
“The frEGGs in the new Hubble image are located in the Northern Coalsack Nebula in the direction of the constellation Cygnus.”
This image from the Digitized Sky Survey shows the location of frEGGs J203441.7+405216. Image credit: NASA / ESA / Hubble / R. Sahai, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory / DSS / Gladys Kober, NASA & Catholic University of America.
The new image also features two giant — O-type and B-type — stars.
“The left star is a rare, giant O-type star, very bright, blue-white stars known to be the hottest in the Universe,” the researchers said.
“These massive stars are 10,000 to a million times the brightness of the Sun and burn themselves out quickly, in a few million years.”
“The right star is an even more massive supergiant B-type star,” they added.
“Supergiant stars also burn through their fuel quickly, anywhere between a few hundred thousand years to tens of millions of years, and die in titanic supernova explosions.”
