This Eerie Crack of Darkness in The Sky Is Hiding a Glittering Secret
"There is a crack," Leonard Cohen croons, "in everything; that's how the light gets in."
He was not referring specifically to a structure in space called Circinus West, but the words apply. The object looks, to our eyes, like nothing so much as an eerie crack, a void in space-time where darkness bleeds through.
Its true nature is significantly more marvelous: it's where light is literally being born, a thick, dark cloud of molecular material in space from which new stars are forming.
The cloud, called a dark nebula, is so dense that the hot, bright, baby stars within are hidden from view – but hints of their presence are there, if you know how to look. New images from the US Department of Energy's Dark Energy Camera show them in stunning detail.
Nebulae come in different categories, depending on how they are lit. Reflection nebulae, such as the Pleiades nebula, are those that reflect the light of the stars around them. Emission nebulae are the ones that tend to get the most attention; they emit their own light in optical wavelengths, created by the ionization of the particles within them, mostly due to ultraviolet irradiation from nearby stars.
Dark nebulae are exactly what they sound like. They're very thick and dense, neither emitting nor reflecting light in optical wavelengths, but absorbing and scattering it instead. They look like holes in space, anomalous gaps in the sea of stars that makes up the cosmos.
But inside their thick and dusty hearts can be found the perfect conditions for star formation. Baby stars are born from overdensities in already dense, dusty, gassy environments. A knot in the gas will become so dense that it collapses under gravity; the spinning, collapsed knot becomes the seed of a baby star, greedily slurping up mass from the abundance of material around it.
Baby stars are messy eaters, and astronomers believe that not all of the material slurped by the protostar ends up adding to its mass. Some of it is instead diverted away from the star, along its external magnetic field lines, and accelerated towards the poles. When it reaches the poles, it is launched away at high speeds as collimated jets.
These jets punch into the surrounding material, their high temperatures turning it into plasma. This produces two glowing lobes on either side of the protostar, which is still shrouded by a thick cloud of dust and gas. But we can see the jets and the lobes. This short-lived phase of a baby star's evolution is known as a Herbig-Haro object, and they are pretty rare.
Circinus West, which sits about 2,500 light-years away and measures about 180 light-years across, is home to a number of Herbig-Haro objects, whose glowing lobes peek through the darkness. Other signs of star formation include the cavities carved out by growing stars, which generate powerful protostellar winds in addition to the jets, and gleams of light.
Eventually, the winds and jets will push away the remaining material, cutting off stellar growth, but allowing the light of the star to stream freely through the Universe. But this current, crucial stage of star formation is one that is somewhat mysterious to us, cocooned as it must be in the dark cloud from which the stars are born.
Images like the new observations of Circinus West can help astronomers understand how baby stars are born, and how their tantrums shape the Universe.
You can download wallpaper-sized versions of the new Dark Energy Camera image on the NOIRLab website.
Almost a Quarter of Moon Impact Debris Eventually Hits Earth
NASA Reveals First-of-Its-Kind Image of Mars Rover Seen From Space
Study Suggests Life Emerges Rapidly in Earth-Like Conditions

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
20-Year Mystery of The Muon's Wiggle May Finally Be Solved
Physicists at Fermilab have made the most precise measurement ever of a long-disputed value – the magnetic 'wiggle' of an elementary particle known as a muon. In somewhat disappointing news, that measurement is in strong agreement with the Standard Model, meaning it probably isn't hiding any exotic new physics as some had hoped. A muon is similar to an electron, except it's about 207 times more massive. The way muons move in a magnetic field should theoretically be very predictable, summed up in what's called its gyromagnetic ratio, or g. In a simple world, the value of g should be a nice, neat 2 – but of course, that would be too easy. The muon's magnetic dance is something of an anomaly, and in the same way that pi is just a touch over 3, the muon's g-factor seemed to be very slightly over 2. How slightly? Just 0.001165920705, according to new results from Fermilab's Muon g-2 experiment. This measurement incorporates data collected over six years of particle accelerator experiments. The team says this final number is accurate to within 127 parts per billion. To put that level of precision into perspective, the researchers say if you measured the width of the US to that degree, you'd be able to tell if a single grain of sand was missing. But the really intriguing part of the research is the room it left for new forces or particles to explain the anomalous magnetic motion. A related project called the Muon g-2 Theory Initiative set out to check what the Standard Model predicted for this value. Incorporating a wider dataset than ever, their latest calculation comes out at 0.00116592033. That puts it extremely close to the value gained from experimental means, which leaves very little wiggle room for any cool, exotic physics to be at play. "The anomalous magnetic moment, or g–2, of the muon is important because it provides a sensitive test of the Standard Model of particle physics," says Regina Rameika, experimental physicist at the US Department of Energy's Office of High Energy Physics. "This is an exciting result and it is great to see an experiment come to a definitive end with a precision measurement." As a muon spins inside a magnetic field, its poles should essentially line up with the field. That turned out to not be the case – instead, it wobbles ever so slightly, like an unbalanced spinning top. And if this wobble was particularly extreme, it could mean the muon is being nudged by unseen, unknown particles. A vacuum isn't ever truly empty – thanks to quantum fluctuations, pairs of virtual particles are constantly popping into and out of existence. These brief interlopers to our reality can affect other nearby particles in various ways. Thanks to its relative heft, the muon is particularly sensitive to the influence of virtual particles. So by precisely measuring how much the muon wobbles beyond its expected range, physicists could calculate the properties of these mysterious virtual particles, potentially unlocking a new realm of physics beyond the Standard Model. Hypothetical explanations could include dark photons or supersymmetry. The g-factor of the muon has been a fascinating thorn in the side of physicists for decades. Clues that something was amiss came in 2001, when the first version of the Muon g-2 experiment revealed a wide discrepancy between theory and practice. Further experiments over the decades since led to increasingly precise measurements, while techniques to calculate the predictions of the Standard Model also improved at the same time. And yet, a mismatch remained. The current version of the Muon g-2 experiment was fired up in 2018, conducting a new run of experiments each year until 2023. Data from the first three runs were released in two batches, each seeming to point more and more towards new physics. This latest measurement incorporates data from the full six runs, which more than triples the dataset used for the last release. That data isn't just more plentiful, but higher quality too, taking advantage of improvements made to the equipment. Sadly for those hoping to add a few extra chapters to their physics textbooks, it seems that in this case everything is as it should be. That's not to say we know everything though – dark matter and even gravity don't fit into the Standard Model yet, so there's still plenty of holes left to plug. The research has been submitted to the journal Physical Review Letters and is available on preprint server arXiv. Sound of Earth's Flipping Magnetic Field Is an Unforgettable Horror World-First Study Reveals How Lightning Sparks Gamma-Ray Flashes The Universe Is 'Suspiciously' Like a Computer Simulation, Physicist Says
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Yahoo
This Eerie Crack of Darkness in The Sky Is Hiding a Glittering Secret
"There is a crack," Leonard Cohen croons, "in everything; that's how the light gets in." He was not referring specifically to a structure in space called Circinus West, but the words apply. The object looks, to our eyes, like nothing so much as an eerie crack, a void in space-time where darkness bleeds through. Its true nature is significantly more marvelous: it's where light is literally being born, a thick, dark cloud of molecular material in space from which new stars are forming. The cloud, called a dark nebula, is so dense that the hot, bright, baby stars within are hidden from view – but hints of their presence are there, if you know how to look. New images from the US Department of Energy's Dark Energy Camera show them in stunning detail. Nebulae come in different categories, depending on how they are lit. Reflection nebulae, such as the Pleiades nebula, are those that reflect the light of the stars around them. Emission nebulae are the ones that tend to get the most attention; they emit their own light in optical wavelengths, created by the ionization of the particles within them, mostly due to ultraviolet irradiation from nearby stars. Dark nebulae are exactly what they sound like. They're very thick and dense, neither emitting nor reflecting light in optical wavelengths, but absorbing and scattering it instead. They look like holes in space, anomalous gaps in the sea of stars that makes up the cosmos. But inside their thick and dusty hearts can be found the perfect conditions for star formation. Baby stars are born from overdensities in already dense, dusty, gassy environments. A knot in the gas will become so dense that it collapses under gravity; the spinning, collapsed knot becomes the seed of a baby star, greedily slurping up mass from the abundance of material around it. Baby stars are messy eaters, and astronomers believe that not all of the material slurped by the protostar ends up adding to its mass. Some of it is instead diverted away from the star, along its external magnetic field lines, and accelerated towards the poles. When it reaches the poles, it is launched away at high speeds as collimated jets. These jets punch into the surrounding material, their high temperatures turning it into plasma. This produces two glowing lobes on either side of the protostar, which is still shrouded by a thick cloud of dust and gas. But we can see the jets and the lobes. This short-lived phase of a baby star's evolution is known as a Herbig-Haro object, and they are pretty rare. Circinus West, which sits about 2,500 light-years away and measures about 180 light-years across, is home to a number of Herbig-Haro objects, whose glowing lobes peek through the darkness. Other signs of star formation include the cavities carved out by growing stars, which generate powerful protostellar winds in addition to the jets, and gleams of light. Eventually, the winds and jets will push away the remaining material, cutting off stellar growth, but allowing the light of the star to stream freely through the Universe. But this current, crucial stage of star formation is one that is somewhat mysterious to us, cocooned as it must be in the dark cloud from which the stars are born. Images like the new observations of Circinus West can help astronomers understand how baby stars are born, and how their tantrums shape the Universe. You can download wallpaper-sized versions of the new Dark Energy Camera image on the NOIRLab website. Almost a Quarter of Moon Impact Debris Eventually Hits Earth NASA Reveals First-of-Its-Kind Image of Mars Rover Seen From Space Study Suggests Life Emerges Rapidly in Earth-Like Conditions
Yahoo
28-04-2025
- Yahoo
Astronomers gaze into 'dark nebula' 60 times the size of the solar system (video)
When you buy through links on our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn a commission. Astronomers have discovered a dense stellar nursery packed with infant stars in a vast "cosmic ink blot."The team made the discovery using one of the most powerful digital cameras in the world: the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Víctor M. Blanco 4-meter telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. The dark shadow overlaid on a starry background is known as the Circinus West molecular cloud. Circinus West is a cold, dense cloud of gas and dust that stretches out for 180 light-years, around 60 times the size of our solar system. Nebulas like this are so dense that light cannot pass through them, resulting in their dark, ink-like appearance and the fitting nickname "dark nebulas." With a mass around 250,000 times that of the sun, the Circinus West molecular cloud, located 2500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Circinus, is jam-packed with the raw material for star formation. Despite being a "dark nebula," the Circinus West molecular cloud isn't so dark that it can completely hide its young stellar population, however. The team zoomed in on this region with the powerful DECam instrument to see these stellar infants and their associated phenomena in greater detail. One dead giveaway of newborn stars is occasional pockets of light punctuating the inky tendrils of the molecular cloud. These are created during star formation when so-called "protostars" — stars that haven't yet gathered enough material to trigger the fusion of hydrogen to helium in their cores — launch jets of material into space, carving cavities in the dense molecular gas and find these high-energy outflows are easier to see than the protostars that launch them. That is because protostars are still wrapped in natal blankets of gas and dust from which they continue to gather mass on their journey to becoming main-sequence stars like the sun. This makes these outflows and cavities a great indicator of the location of protostars. Multiple outflows can be seen in the central black tendril of the Circinus West molecular cloud, named the Cir-MMS the heart of the Cir-MMS region is a large cavity that is being cleared by radiation blasting out for an infant star. Another stellar newborn is clearing a similar cavity at the bottom left of the Cir-MMS region. The abundance of "Herbig-Haro" (HH) objects in Circinus West is another indication of active star formation. HH objects are glowing red patches of nebulous gas and dust commonly found near newborn stars. They are created when fast-moving gas ejected by stars slams into slower-moving surrounding gas. Circinus West is packed with such objects, punctuating the dark lanes of gas and dust. It isn't just newborn stars that populate Circinus West. This molecular cloud is also home to many stars at the other end of the stellar cycle of life and nebulas, seen by the DECam in Circinus West as red blotches, are the remains of red giant stars, stellar bodies that have reached the end of their hydrogen supplies and their main sequence lifetimes. At this point, they shed their outer layers, with this material dispersing and cooling, creating a planetary nebula (which somewhat confusingly actually have nothing to do with planets). Related Stories: — James Webb Space Telescope investigates the origins of 'failed stars' in the Flame Nebula — Running Chicken Nebula glows in gorgeous new image from Very Large Telescope in Chile — Earth-size planet discovered around cool red dwarf star shares its name with a biscuit The team behind this research hopes that by studying the infant and aging stars of Circinus West and their outflows can reveal more about how they shape their immediate environments Ultimately, this could reveal the processes that govern the evolution of galaxies like the Milky Way.