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Today in the Milky Way: Cloudy Skies

By Guest PostJune 30, 2012Scienceadam block, aquila dark cloud, aquila rift arcs, astronomy picture, cloudy skies, dust lanes, Galaxy, gas and dust, herbig haro object, hh32, infrared, ldn 673, light years, Milky Way, mount lemmon skycenter, radiation, radio wave, rno 109, schulmann telescope, stellar winds, summer triangle, university of arizona

Adam Block of the UA’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter brings us a rare view of the clouds wafting through our Milky Way in this Astronomy Picture of the Day.

In silhouette against the Milky Way’s faint starlight, its dusty molecular clouds likely contain raw material to form hundreds of thousands of stars, prompting astronomers to eagerly search the clouds for telltale signs of star birth.

This telescopic close-up looks toward the region at a fragmented Aquila dark cloud complex identified as LDN 673, stretching across a field of view slightly wider than the full moon.

For this image selected by NASA as the June 29 Astronomy Picture of the Day, astrophotographer Adam Block of the University of Arizona’s Mount Lemmon SkyCenter remotely operated the 32-inch Schulmann Telescope to peer into the vast chasms of gas and dust wafting through the Milky Way, exposing for about 15 minutes at a time during several nights in April and May. (more…)

Stars Pop Onto the Scene in New WISE Image

PASADENA, Calif. — A new, large mosaic from NASA’s Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) showcases a vast stretch of cosmic clouds bubbling with new star birth. The region — a 1,000-square-degree chunk of our Milky Way galaxy — is home to numerous star-forming clouds, where massive stars have blown out bubbles in the gas and dust.

“Massive stars sweep up and destroy their natal clouds, but they continuously spark new stars to form along the way,” said WISE Mission Scientist Dave Leisawitz of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. Leisawitz is co-author of a new paper reporting the results in the Astrophysical Journal. “Occasionally a new, massive star forms, perpetuating the sequence of events and giving rise to the dazzling fireworks display seen in this WISE mosaic.” (more…)

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Today in the Milky Way: Cloudy Skies

Stars Pop Onto the Scene in New WISE Image