Astronomers have made an incredible discovery of a large molecular cloud located just over 300 light-years from Earth that is invisible to the naked eye but detectable in the far-ultraviolet range of the electromagnetic spectrum. This discovery was recently published in Nature Astronomy and could help better understand the ingredients for the creation of stars and planets, as molecular clouds are comprised of the gas and dust needed to create these celestial objects, along with developing new methods for detecting and studying molecular clouds throughout the cosmos.
The researchers have named the molecular cloud, which is comprised primarily of hydrogen, after the Greek goddess of mythology, “Eos”, and estimate that Eos is approximately 40 moons in diameter and has a mass of approximately 3,400 suns. As noted, Eos is invisible to the naked eye and was only discovered using specialized telescopic instruments, meaning astronomers could use similar methods to identify other molecular clouds throughout the cosmos.
“When we look through our telescopes, we catch whole solar systems in the act of forming, but we don’t know in detail how that happens,” said Dr. Blakesley Burkhart, who is an associate professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department at Rutgers University and lead author of the study. “Our discovery of Eos is exciting because we can now directly measure how molecular clouds are forming and dissociating, and how a galaxy begins to transform interstellar gas and dust into stars and planets.”
Going forward, the team is currently using NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope with the goal of identifying more molecular clouds with intriguing results recently being made available on arXiv.
How will Eos help scientists better understand molecular clouds in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: Nature Astronomy, EurekAlert!, arXiv
Featured Image: The molecular cloud W51 taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory. (Credit: NASA)