University of California, Los Angeles | 2016 Dec 01
New observations confirm long-standing theory that stars are copious producers of heavy elements
[img3="In the galaxy II Zw 40, dust (yellow) is strongly associated with clusters of stars (orange). UCLA researchers have used new observations of this galaxy to confirm that these stars are creating enormous amounts of dust. Credit: S.M. Consiglio et al., ApJL, 2016 Dec"]http://cms.ipressroom.com.s3.amazonaws. ... 16_mid.jpg[/img3][hr][/hr]Galaxies are often thought of as sparkling with stars, but they also contain gas and dust. Now, a team led by UCLA astronomers has used new data to show that stars are responsible for producing dust on galactic scales, a finding consistent with long-standing theory. Dust is important because it is a key component of rocky planets such as Earth. ...
Jean Turner, a UCLA professor in the department of astronomy and physics, her graduate student S. Michelle Consiglio, and two other collaborators observed a galaxy roughly 33 million light-years away. The researchers focused on this galaxy, called II Zw 40, because it is vigorously forming stars and therefore useful for testing theories of star formation. “This galaxy has one of the largest star-forming regions in the local universe,” Turner said. ...
Consiglio and her team observed the central region of II Zw 40, a part of the galaxy with two young clusters of stars, each containing roughly a million stars. By imaging II Zw 40’s star clusters at different wavelengths, they constructed a map that traced the dust in the galaxy. Astronomical dust — made mostly of carbon, silicon and oxygen — is prevalent in the universe. ...
ALMA Reveals Potential Localized Dust Enrichment from Massive Star Clusters in II Zw 40 - S. Michelle Consiglio et al
- Astrophysical Journal Letters 833(1):L6 (2016 Dec 10) DOI: 10.3847/2041-8205/833/1/L6
arXiv.org > astro-ph > arXiv:1611.09936 > 29 Nov 2016