ESA: Herschel reveals the hidden side of star birth
Posted: Thu May 06, 2010 4:18 pm
Herschel reveals the hidden side of star birth
ESA Space Science PR 09-2010 - 06 May 2010![Image](http://spaceinimages.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2010/05/the_galactic_bubble_rcw_120/9914178-2-eng-GB/The_Galactic_bubble_RCW_120_node_full_image.jpg)
The Galactic bubble RCW 120 (ESA/PACS/SPIRE/HOBYS Consortia)
![Image](http://www.esa.int/images/RegionL30_70_160_250_v2_L.jpg)
Stellar pregnancy and birth in the Milky Way (ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium)
![Image](http://www.esa.int/images/RegionL59_70_160_250_v2_L.jpg)
Stellar 'assembly line' in Vulpecula (ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium)
Herschel's first year in space video (ESA TV, 2010)
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.
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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.
![Image](http://spaceinimages.esa.int/var/esa/storage/images/esa_multimedia/images/2010/05/the_galactic_bubble_rcw_120/9914178-2-eng-GB/The_Galactic_bubble_RCW_120_node_full_image.jpg)
The Galactic bubble RCW 120 (ESA/PACS/SPIRE/HOBYS Consortia)
![Image](http://www.esa.int/images/RegionL30_70_160_250_v2_L.jpg)
Stellar pregnancy and birth in the Milky Way (ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium)
![Image](http://www.esa.int/images/RegionL59_70_160_250_v2_L.jpg)
Stellar 'assembly line' in Vulpecula (ESA/Hi-GAL Consortium)
Herschel's first year in space video (ESA TV, 2010)