ESA: Herschel reveals the hidden side of star birth

[bystander]

Herschel reveals the hidden side of star birth
ESA Space Science PR 09-2010 - 06 May 2010

The first scientific results from ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory are revealing previously hidden details of star formation. New images show thousands of distant galaxies furiously building stars and beautiful star-forming clouds draped across the Milky Way. One picture even catches an ‘impossible’ star in the act of formation.

Presented today during a major scientific symposium held at the European Space Agency (ESA), the results challenge old ideas of star birth, and open new roads for future research.

Herschel’s observation of the star-forming cloud RCW 120 has revealed an embryonic star which looks set to turn into one of the biggest and brightest stars in our Galaxy within the next few hundred thousand years. It already contains eight to ten times the mass of the Sun and is still surrounded by an additional 2000 solar masses of gas and dust from which it can feed further.
...
Using its unprecedented resolution and sensitivity, Herschel is conducting a census of star-forming regions in our Galaxy. “Before Herschel, it was not clear how the material in the Milky Way came together in high enough densities and at sufficiently low temperatures to form stars,” says Sergio Molinari, Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario, Roma.

A new Herschel image released today covering a number of stellar nurseries in the Milky Way shows how it happens. Stellar embryos first appear inside filaments of glowing dust and gas draped across the Galaxy. These form chains of stellar nurseries, tens of light-years long, wrapping the Galaxy in a web of star birth.

Herschel has also been surveying deep space beyond our Galaxy, and has measured the infrared light from thousands of other galaxies, spread across billions of light-years of the Universe. Each galaxy appears as just a pinprick but its brightness allows astronomers to determine the rate of star birth within it. Roughly speaking, the brighter the galaxy the more stars it is forming.

Here, too, Herschel has challenged our previous understanding by showing that galaxies have been evolving over cosmic time much faster than previously thought. Astronomers believed that galaxies have been forming stars at about the same rate for the last three billion years. Herschel shows this is not true.

The Galactic bubble RCW 120 (ESA/PACS/SPIRE/HOBYS Consortia)


Stellar pregnancy and birth in the Milky Way (ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium)


Stellar 'assembly line' in Vulpecula (ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium)

Herschel's first year in space video (ESA TV, 2010)

[owlice]

GAH! This is very cool, and the images are lovely!!

[neufer]

[bystander]

Other Herschel First Science Stories ESA - 06 May 2010

ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory is changing the way scientists view the Universe. From nearby celestial objects to distant ones, from the smallest molecules to the largest galaxies, Herschel is revealing new details about how the Universe behaves.

• Herschel takes the temperature of an interstellar cloud

  The unrivalled ability of ESA’s Herschel infrared space observatory to discern detail in celestial objects has been used to take the temperature across a star-forming cloud. For the first time, an entire cloud has had its temperature mapped from the centre to the edge.

  Tracing the Milky Way’s hidden reservoirs of gas

  ESA’s Herschel infrared space observatory has found that hydrogen fluoride molecules are everywhere in interstellar gas clouds. They betray hidden reservoirs of gas, and may ultimately become a key tracer of star-forming gas clouds in distant galaxies.

  Herschel resolves the cosmic infrared fog

  ESA’s Herschel space telescope has discovered that previously unseen distant galaxies are responsible for a cosmic fog of infrared radiation. The galaxies are some of the faintest and furthest objects seen by Herschel, and open a new window on the birth of stars in the early Universe.

Herschel Gallery

[BMAONE23]

Boy Neuf, that comparison really bites... amazingly similar shape though...Nice find

[makc]

yep, neufer is this forum's king of mental association.

sometimes I piss myself too, when I see similarities in two irrelevant objects.

teapotiscat.GIF (3.18 KiB) Viewed 1016 times

[Hofi]

Great find, neufer! There are several such objects. Just look at the "North America Nebula" (NGC 7000)! I really like this similarities!

[bystander]

esa: oshi: online showcase of herschel images

[owlice]

An image for neufer, Inside the Dark Heart of the Eagle:

http://oshi.esa.int/#detail=http://oshi ... ml|3fid=17

(Wow; what a stupendous pic!)

[bystander]

ESA / Science and Technology / Herschel / 06 May 2010

These are some of the many discoveries presented this week at the Herschel First Results Symposium, ESLAB 2010, held at the European Space Research and Technology Centre, Noordwijk, The Netherlands.

Herschel unveils rare massive stars in the act of forming

New images from ESA's Herschel space observatory reveal high-mass protostars around two ionised regions in our Galaxy. The detection of these rare stars in an early phase of evolution is key to understanding the mysterious formation of massive stars.

Herschel image of the HII region RCW 120 (ESA/PACS & SPIRE Consortia)


The 'collect and collapse' model (Deharveng & Zavagno, LAM, France)

Herschel reveals galaxies in the GOODS fields in a brand new light

The discovery of a previously unresolved population of galaxies in the GOODS fields and the first measurements of properties of galaxies in the almost unexplored far-infrared domain are among the first exciting scientific results achieved by Herschel's PACS and SPIRE instruments. These findings confirm the extraordinary capabilities of ESA's new infrared space observatory to investigate the formation and evolution of galaxies.

GOODS-South as viewed by PACS (ESA/PACS & PEP Key Programme Consortia)


GOODS-North as viewed by PACS (ESA/PACS & PEP Key Programme Consortia)


GOODS-North as viewed by SPIRE (ESA/SPIRE & PEP Key Programme Consortia)

Herschel's HIFI follows the trail of cosmic water

Herschel's HIFI instrument was especially designed to follow the water trail in the Universe over a wide range of scales, from the Solar System out to extragalactic sources. Early results, presented this week at the Herschel First Results Symposium, demonstrate how HIFI uses water to probe the physical and chemical conditions in different regions of the cosmos.

Water lines toward low-mass protostars in the NGC 1333 star-forming region
(Foreground: ESA/HIFI consortium / Background: NASA/JPL/CfA)


Water lines toward an intermediate-mass protostar in NGC 7129
(Foreground: ESA/HIFI consortium / Background: NASA/JPL/CfA)

Herschel-HIFI unveils precursors of life-enabling molecules in Orion Nebula

ESA's Herschel Space Observatory has revealed the chemical fingerprints of potential life-enabling organic molecules in the Orion Nebula, a nearby stellar nursery in our Milky Way galaxy. This detailed spectrum, obtained with the Heterodyne Instrument for the Far Infrared (HIFI) - one of Herschel's three innovative instruments - demonstrates the gold mine of information that Herschel-HIFI will provide on how organic molecules form in space.

HIFI spectrum of water and organics in the Orion Nebula
(ESA, HEXOS and the HIFI consortium)