we are science

RSS | Random | Archive

About Me

"Atoms synthesized in the interiors of stars are commonly returned to the interstellar gas… The atoms returned are, naturally, those most readily made in the thermonuclear reactions in stellar interiors:…. All the elements of the Earth except hydrogen and some helium have been cooked by a kind of stellar alchemy billions of years ago in stars, some of which are today inconspicuous white dwarfs on the other side of the Milky Way Galaxy. The nitrogen in our DNA, the calcium in our teeth, the iron in our blood, the carbon in our apple pies were made in the interiors of collapsing stars. We are made of starstuff."

Blogs I follow:

Theme by: Miguel
  1. unknownskywalker: Mysterious giant gas ring origin identified An international team unveiled the origin of the giant gas ring in the Leo group of galaxies. With the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), the scientists were able to detect the optical signature of the densest regions of the ring. Emitted by massive young stars, this light points to the fact that the ring gas is able to form stars. The Leo ring, a giant ring of cold gas 650,000 light-years wide surrounding the galaxies of the Leo group, is one of the most dramatic and mysterious clouds of intergalactic gas. Since its discovery in the 1980s, its origin and nature were debated. Last year, studies of the metal abundances in the gas led to the belief that the ring was made of this famous primordial gas. In the current theories on galaxy formation, the accretion of cold primordial gas is a key process in the early steps of galaxy growth. Two main features of primordial gas are that it has never sojourned in any galaxy and that it does not satisfy the conditions required to form stars. This observation rules out the primordial nature of the gas, which is of galactic origin. Thanks to numerical simulations made at the Centre d’Etudes Nucléaires (CEA) in France a scenario for the formation of this ring has been proposed — a violent collision between two galaxies more than 38 million light-years apart. The simulations allowed the identification of the two galaxies that collided — NGC 3384, one of the galaxies at the center of the Leo group, and M96, a massive spiral galaxy at the periphery of the group. At the time of the collision, which was slightly more than one billion years ago, the disk of gas of one of the galaxies is blown away and will eventually form a ring outside the galaxy. The gas in the Leo ring is definitely not primordial. The hunt for primordial gas is still open. Image: The Leo ring: deep image in the optical domain with the distribution of the gas in HI in yellow-orange. The thumbnails on the right are three of the dense areas of the ring with their optical counterparts. Source: Astronomy.com

    unknownskywalker:

    Mysterious giant gas ring origin identified

    An international team unveiled the origin of the giant gas ring in the Leo group of galaxies. With the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope (CFHT), the scientists were able to detect the optical signature of the densest regions of the ring. Emitted by massive young stars, this light points to the fact that the ring gas is able to form stars.

    The Leo ring, a giant ring of cold gas 650,000 light-years wide surrounding the galaxies of the Leo group, is one of the most dramatic and mysterious clouds of intergalactic gas. Since its discovery in the 1980s, its origin and nature were debated. Last year, studies of the metal abundances in the gas led to the belief that the ring was made of this famous primordial gas.

    In the current theories on galaxy formation, the accretion of cold primordial gas is a key process in the early steps of galaxy growth. Two main features of primordial gas are that it has never sojourned in any galaxy and that it does not satisfy the conditions required to form stars. This observation rules out the primordial nature of the gas, which is of galactic origin.

    Thanks to numerical simulations made at the Centre d’Etudes Nucléaires (CEA) in France a scenario for the formation of this ring has been proposed — a violent collision between two galaxies more than 38 million light-years apart. The simulations allowed the identification of the two galaxies that collided — NGC 3384, one of the galaxies at the center of the Leo group, and M96, a massive spiral galaxy at the periphery of the group.

    At the time of the collision, which was slightly more than one billion years ago, the disk of gas of one of the galaxies is blown away and will eventually form a ring outside the galaxy. The gas in the Leo ring is definitely not primordial. The hunt for primordial gas is still open.

    Image: The Leo ring: deep image in the optical domain with the distribution of the gas in HI in yellow-orange. The thumbnails on the right are three of the dense areas of the ring with their optical counterparts.

    Source: Astronomy.com

    2. 10 Notes
    1. dcdancnh reblogged this from unknownskywalker
    2. madeofstarstuff reblogged this from unknownskywalker
    3. unknownskywalker posted this
    Reblogged: unknownskywalker