Starship Asterisk*

Where Stars Are Born

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Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA); Acknowledgment:
J. Gallagher (University of Wisconsin), M. Mountain (STScI), and P. Puxley (NSF)

This mosaic image is the sharpest wide-angle view ever obtained of the starburst galaxy, Messier 82 (M82). The galaxy is remarkable for its bright blue disk, webs of shredded clouds and fiery-looking plumes of glowing hydrogen blasting out of its central regions.

Throughout the galaxy's center, young stars are being born 10 times faster than they are inside our entire Milky Way Galaxy, which results in a huge concentration of young stars carved into the gas and dust at the galaxy's center. The fierce galactic superwind generated from these stars compresses enough gas to make millions of more stars.

In M82, young stars are crammed into tiny but massive star clusters. These, in turn, congregate by the dozens to make the bright patches, or starburst clumps, in the central parts of M82. The clusters in the clumps can only be distinguished in the sharp Hubble images. Most of the pale, white objects sprinkled around the body of M82 that look like fuzzy stars are actually individual star clusters about 20 light-years across and contain up to a million stars.

The rapid rate of star formation in this galaxy eventually will be self-limiting. When star formation becomes too vigorous, it will consume or destroy the material needed to make more stars. The starburst then will subside, probably in a few tens of millions of years.

The observation was made in March 2006, with Hubble's Advanced Camera for Surveys' Wide Field Channel. Astronomers assembled this six-image composite mosaic by combining exposures taken with four colored filters that capture starlight from visible and infrared wavelengths, as well as the light from the glowing hydrogen filaments.

JohnD wrote:Do these events affect the possibility of life out there? The Drake equation does not include a specific factor for 'inhabitable, but too much radiation', which could mean that vast numbers of otherwise habitable planets are and remain sterile.

JohnD wrote:We see more and more pictures of galaxies in turmoil. I'm clear that even in a galactic collision stars do not collide, but the gas and dust clouds do resulting in enormous particle and radiation fluxes. These occur within our own galaxy, on a lesser scale.
Do these events affect the possibility of life out there? The Drake equation does not include a specific factor for 'inhabitable, but too much radiation', which could mean that vast numbers of otherwise habitable planets are and remain sterile.

JohnD wrote:
We see more and more pictures of galaxies in turmoil. I'm clear that even in a galactic collision stars do not collide, but the gas and dust clouds do resulting in enormous particle and radiation fluxes. These occur within our own galaxy, on a lesser scale.

Do these events affect the possibility of life out there? The Drake equation does not include a specific factor for 'inhabitable, but too much radiation', which could mean that vast numbers of otherwise habitable planets are and remain sterile.

León wrote:

beyond wrote:

León wrote:It is certainly a great contribution the discovery of the wind as the cause of the extragalactic emission,

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Hey Leon, where did you find the picture of the 'blow-hard' with the cinamon bun hair

Here:
http://apodando.blogspot.com/
http://www.google.com.ar/search?q=eolo% ... =firefox-a

beyond wrote:

León wrote:It is certainly a great contribution the discovery of the wind as the cause of the extragalactic emission,

Click to view full size image

Hey Leon, where did you find the picture of the 'blow-hard' with the cinamon bun hair

orin stepanek wrote:Maybe M82 is an exploding cigar.

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APOD Robot wrote: M82: Galaxy with a Supergalactic Wind

Explanation: What's lighting up the Cigar Galaxy? M82, as this irregular galaxy is also known, was stirred up by a recent pass near large spiral galaxy M81. This doesn't fully explain the source of the red-glowing outwardly expanding gas, however. Recent evidence indicates that this gas is being driven out by the combined emerging particle winds of many stars, together creating a galactic superwind.. The above photographic mosaic highlights a specific color of red light strongly emitted by ionized hydrogen gas, showing detailed filaments of this gas.