Stellar fireworks celebrate the birth of the giant cluster

Astronomers created a surprising new image showing celestial fireworks in the star cluster G286.21 + 0.17.

Most of the stars in the universe, including our Sun, were born in large star clusters. These clusters are the building blocks of galaxies, but their formation from dense molecular clouds remains largely a mystery.

The image of the group G286.21 + 0.17, captured in the act of formation, is a mosaic of multiple wavelengths formed by more than 750 individual radio observations with the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array (ALMA) and 9 infrared images of The NASA. / ESA’s Hubble Space Telescope. The cluster is located in the Carina region of our galaxy, about 8000 light years away.

ALMA reveals dense clouds made of molecular gas (purple ‘fireworks streamers’). The telescope observed the movements of the turbulent gas that falls into the cluster, forming dense cores that eventually create individual stars.

The stars in the image are revealed by their infrared light, as seen by Hubble, including a large group of stars emerging from one side of the cloud. The powerful winds and radiation from the most massive of these stars are blasting away the molecular clouds, leaving faint wisps of bright, hot dust (shown in yellow and red).

“This image shows stars in various stages of formation within this unique group,” said Yu Cheng of the University of Virginia at Charlottesville, Virginia, and lead author of two articles published in The Astrophysical Journal.

Hubble revealed around a thousand newly formed stars with a wide range of masses. Furthermore, ALMA demonstrated that there is much more mass present in the dense gas that has yet to collapse. “Overall, the process can take at least a million years to complete,” added Cheng.

“This illustrates how dynamic and chaotic the process of star birth is,” said co-author Jonathan Tan of Chalmers University in Sweden and the University of Virginia and principal investigator on the project. “We see competing forces at work: the gravity and turbulence of the cloud on one side, and the stellar winds and radiation pressure of young stars on the other. This process sculpts the region. It is surprising to think that our own Sun and our planets were once part of such a cosmic dance. “

“ALMA’s phenomenal resolution and sensitivity are evident in this striking image of star formation,” said Joe Pesce, NSF Program Officer for NRAO / ALMA. “Combined with data from the Hubble Space Telescope, we can clearly see the power of multiple wavelength observations to help us understand these fundamental universal processes.”