New atlas of five nearby ‘stellar nurseries’ provides insight into star birth
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Star formation is a stellar phenomenon that occurs when a vast cloud of gas and dust in the galaxy collapses due to gravity. However, how this all happens has been hard to crack and raises a number of questions, including how many stars are formed from a cloud.
To have a better understanding of star formation, astronomers have created a first-of-its-kind atlas documenting five nearby stellar nurseries. The vast cosmic panoramas brilliantly highlight dark areas of dust, glowing clouds, newly forming stars, and a lot more. It also highlights the formation of the young stars embedded in thick clouds of dust. This atlas can act as a unique tool to unravel the mysteries shrouding the birth of stars.
“In these images we can detect even the faintest sources of light, like stars far less massive than the Sun, revealing objects that no one has ever seen before. This will allow us to understand the processes that transform gas and dust into stars,” said Stefan Meingast, an astronomer at the University of Vienna in Austria and lead author of this new study, in an official statement.
The creation of the atlas
To create this vast pool atlas, the team particularly observed five star-forming regions located at the constellations of Orion, Ophiuchus, Chamaeleon, Corona Australis, and Lupus. These massive stellar regions are only 1500 light-years from Earth.
The vast infrared atlas was created by stitching together over one million images taken by the Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) located at ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile.
VISTA’s special infrared camera VIRCAM was used to capture light originating from the deep interiors of the dust clouds. “The dust obscures these young stars from our view, making them virtually invisible to our eyes. Only at infrared wavelengths can we look deep into these clouds, studying the stars in the making,” explained Alena Rottensteiner, the co-author of the study.
According to the official release, the diameter of VIRCAM's field of view is large enough to fit three full Moons. Through this survey project called VISIONS, about one million images were collected over a period of five years, and they were put together for the creation of this atlas.
“With VISIONS we monitor these baby stars over several years, allowing us to measure their motion and learn how they leave their parent clouds,” said João Alves, an astronomer at the University of Vienna and Principal Investigator of VISIONS.
The results have been published in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.
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