Breathtaking Images of Star Birth Amid the Cold Cosmic Dust | 80beats | Discover Magazine

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Breathtaking Images of Star Birth Amid the Cold Cosmic Dust

herschel-3 Finally, the ESA presents this image showing “an entire assembly line of newborn stars.”

The process starts with the diffuse gas and dust spread across the galaxy, which glows faintly in Herschel’s infrared detectors. This is the raw material from which stars are born. Eventually turbulence causes the material to condense into long filaments, where the material becomes colder and denser. In the final step, gravitational forces break apart the filaments to create chains of stellar embryos that can collapse to form baby stars.

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Pages: 1 2 3

May 6th, 2010 1:39 PM Tags: European Space Agency, Herschel, stars, telescopes
by Eliza Strickland in Photo Gallery, Space | 3 comments | RSS feed | Trackback >

3 Responses to “Breathtaking Images of Star Birth Amid the Cold Cosmic Dust”

1. Alan Says:
May 6th, 2010 at 11:02 pm

Wow, this is sincerely breathtaking…
Its one of these never before seen images…
2. Some Says:
May 8th, 2010 at 2:44 pm

Awesome.
3. wynnyelle Says:
May 12th, 2010 at 2:45 pm

Those filaments are similar to the Crab Nebula filaments that have formed only in the last thousand years. That means that nebula will also eventually form new stars?

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