22 notes &
Astronomers Get Rare Peek at Early Stage of Star Formation
ScienceDaily (Mar. 14, 2012) — Using radio and infrared telescopes, astronomers have obtained a first tantalizing look at a crucial early stage in star formation. The new observations promise to help scientists understand the early stages of a sequence of events through which a giant cloud of gas and dust collapses into dense cores that, in turn, form new stars.
The scientists studied a giant cloud about 770 light-years from Earth in the constellation Perseus. They used the European Space Agency’s Herschel Space Observatory and the National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (GBT) to make detailed observations of a clump, containing nearly 100 times the mass of the Sun, within that cloud.
(via bouncingdodecahedrons)
