| 12th of October 2015 |
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| Peeking into our galaxy's stellar nursery |
| by Erik Muller (National Astronomy Observatory, Japan) |
| From the Press Release:
Led by University of Florida astronomer Peter Barnes and Erik Muller at
the National Astronomy Observatory of Japan, a team of international
researchers has just released the most comprehensive images anyone has ever
seen of the Milky Way's cold interstellar gas clouds where new stars and solar
systems are being born. - The complexity of the images was made possible
because of the telescope used for the study, the Mopra radio telescope located
in Australia. The mapping survey itself is called "ThrUMMS," which stands for
the Three-mm
Ultimate Mopra Milky Way Survey. The interstellar clouds that this survey
targeted are so cold that they are made up molecules of hydrogen, rather than
much warmer clouds where the hydrogen may be atomic or ionized. References:
Image credit: Shown above is the target field taken with the Colombia telescpoe (Dame et al. 2000) with ~1 degree resolution. ThrUMMS achieves a resolution of 72". |