Latest news with #BlakesleyBurkhart
Time of India
05-05-2025
- Science
- Time of India
Bigger than 5,000 Suns; here's why this massive near-earth space cloud remained hidden till now?
Scientists have found a huge cloud called Eos close to our solar system. Rutgers University astronomers made this discovery. Named Eos, it is a star-forming cloud of gas and dust. It is the nearest one ever found. The cloud was hidden because it lacked carbon monoxide. Researchers spotted it using ultraviolet light. Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Why Eos was hidden Tired of too many ads? Remove Ads Popular in International Why Eos matters Astronomers at New Jersey's Rutgers University have identified a giant star-forming cloud astonishingly close to our solar system. The cloud lies about 300 light-years away, making it the nearest of its kind ever is named 'Eos' after the Greek goddess of dawn. It is a cool, dense blob of dust and gas, a type known to often host stellar nurseries, the star-forming regions of interstellar space that contain high concentrations of gas and dust, which serve as the building blocks for the birth of new additional analysis by the team suggests that Eos hasn't had significant stellar births in recent is a crescent-shaped molecular cloud of gas and dust. Though Eos appears only as wide as 40 full moons in the night sky, its actual size is enormous, spanning dozens of light-years across and weighing over 5,000 times the mass of our molecular clouds hide in darkness. They contain mostly hydrogen, which emits little light when cold. Astronomers usually detect them by spotting carbon monoxide in radio or infrared wavelengths. But Eos has very little carbon monoxide, so it was researchers found Eos by hunting for far-ultraviolet fluorescence from hydrogen molecules. They used data from the Korean satellite STSAT-1's FIMS-SPEAR spectrograph. This marks the first time a molecular cloud has been discovered by its far-UV glow. In a statement, Professor Blakesley Burkhart of Rutgers University hopes it will open up new possibilities for studying the molecular lives on the edge of the Local Bubble , a cavity of hot gas surrounding our Sun. It provides a rare chance to study how molecular clouds form and fade close to home. Models show Eos will evaporate in about 6 million years and pose no threat to observing Eos's UV glow, scientists can directly measure how interstellar gas and dust transform into stars and team plans to expand this technique across the galaxy further. A proposed NASA mission, Eos, would map far-UV emission over wider regions. Early JWST(James Webb Space Telescope ) observations hint at more distant hydrogen clouds glowing in far-UV Eos is a timely reminder that some of the galaxy's most important structures still hide in plain sight, and we know very little about them.
Scientific American
30-04-2025
- Science
- Scientific American
Giant, Glowing Gas Cloud Discovered Just 300 Light-Years Away
The surprise discovery of a huge cloud of molecular gas — the stuff that forms stars — just 300 light-years away is opening up new ways to study the conditions that enable star birth. Stars form from collapsing clouds of molecular gas. We see this in the likes of the Orion Nebula, which gets energized by hot ultraviolet radiation of the young stars born within. However, finding molecular clouds before they begin producing stars is more difficult. Such clouds are predominantly made from molecular hydrogen gas, which, when it isn't being energized by starlight, is very faint — almost invisible. (Atomic hydrogen, on the other hand, is easily detectable by radio telescopes). Astronomers usually use radio telescopes to detect carbon monoxide, which is available in much lower quantities in molecular clouds, as a proxy. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. But what about the clouds without much carbon monoxide? Astronomers led by Blakesley Burkhart of Rutgers University–New Brunswick in New Jersey and Thavisha Dharmawardena of New York University, have pioneered an entirely new way of seeing the invisible. Using far-ultraviolet data from the Korean STSAT-1 satellite, they directly detected molecules of hydrogen fluorescing. "This is the first-ever molecular cloud discovered by looking for far-ultraviolet emission of molecular hydrogen directly," Burkhart said in a statement. "This cloud is literally glowing in the dark." The cloud is roughly crescent-shaped and sits on the edge of the Local Bubble, which is a volume of space where the interstellar medium is more rarefied than its surroundings, perhaps having been emptied by the shockwaves of hundreds of ancient supernovas. The sun and our solar system are passing through the Local Bubble, and have been doing so for the past five million years or so. The cloud, named Eos after the goddess of Greek mythology who signified the dawn, contains approximately 3,400 solar masses worth of gas. It's also depleted in carbon monoxide, which is why it had gone undetected by conventional means. Eos is predicted to disperse, or photodissociate, as a result of background photons impacting the cloud's molecules, in about 5.7 million years' time. This is too soon for it to begin forming stars, unless there is some other trigger that advances things, such as the gravitational disturbance of another passing cloud. Intriguingly, the average star-formation rate in our sun's neighborhood has been calculated at 200 solar masses per million years. Eos is losing mass to the wider interstellar medium at a rate of 600 solar masses per million years, three times the rate at which molecular gas is converted into stars. Therefore, this dispersion of molecular clouds as a result of photodissociation from light emitted by nearby stars seems to act as a feedback mechanism to regulate the rate of star formation, Burkhart's team believes. This is useful information for telling us more about the conditions needed to enable star formation in other, more distant clouds. "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 Burkhart. "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." And the discovery of other, similar clouds could be just on the horizon. "The use of the far-ultraviolet fluorescence emission technique could rewrite our understanding of the interstellar medium, uncovering hidden clouds across the galaxy and even out to the furthest detectable limits of cosmic dawn," said Dharmawardena. Eos may not see the dawn of new stars, but its existence is testament to a greater dawn, going all the way back to near the beginning of the universe, in which stars have brought daylight to a dark cosmos. The findings were published on April 28 in the journal Nature Astronomy.
Yahoo
30-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Huge, Invisible Cloud Discovered Just 300 Light-Years From The Solar System
A giant object that has been lurking in the relative galactic vicinity of the Solar System this entire time has just been unmasked in all its enormous, invisible glory. Just 300 light-years away, at the edge of the Local Bubble of space, astronomers have discovered a huge, crescent-shaped cloud of molecular hydrogen, the basic building block of everything in the Universe. It's the first time scientists have managed to discover molecular material in interstellar space by looking for the glow of far-ultraviolet light. Its discoverers have named the cloud Eos, after the ancient Greek goddess of the dawn. "This is the first-ever molecular cloud discovered by looking for far-ultraviolet emission of molecular hydrogen directly," says astrophysicist Blakesley Burkhart of Rutgers University in the US. "The data showed glowing hydrogen molecules detected via fluorescence in the far-ultraviolet. This cloud is literally glowing in the dark." When you look into the night sky, the stars and planets look like glittering diamonds strewn across velvet. You see pinpricks of light, but not much between them. Interstellar space, however, is not empty. Tenuous molecular material drifts between the stars, sometimes coming together in a higher-density cloud. This material is the stuff from which the stars are born, but it's hard to see when it's not all clumped together to form a nebula. Stars are very, very bright, and the glow emitted by the interstellar medium is very, very faint. There are ways to detect it; for instance, light traveling through a cloud of something can be subtly changed, either in the orientation of the wave, or a shift in the frequency. One theory about the matter in interstellar space is that it may have been evading detection. One of the most popular tracers that astronomers look for, for example, is carbon monoxide, and it has yielded a lot of information about the interstellar medium. But what about clouds that don't have a lot of carbon monoxide? Burkhart and her colleagues took a different approach, analyzing publicly released observations collected by South Korea's STSat-1 ultraviolet space telescope. Hydrogen makes up around 90 percent of the visible Universe by atoms, and 73 percent by mass. Molecular hydrogen fluoresces in far-ultraviolet when irradiated by ultraviolet starlight, so the researchers focused their efforts on searching for a strong emission associated with this interaction. This is what led them to Eos, and enabled them to map its size and shape. It's roughly crescent-shaped and has a diameter of about 80 to 85 light-years. Within that contour, it contains around 2,000 solar masses' worth of hydrogen, representing around 36 percent of the total mass of the cloud. If we could see it with our eyes in the night sky, Eos would be 40 times the width of the full Moon. This material within the cloud, the team determined, is likely being evaporated by the stars around it, a process called photodissociation. It's dissipating at a rate of around 600 solar masses per million years, and will be totally gone in around 5.7 million years' time. That's not very long, on cosmic timescales. "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," Burkhart says. "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." What's even more exciting is that the work shows a viable way to search for the heretofore invisible molecular clouds that are lurking throughout the Milky Way, and even the wider Universe. It'll offer new insight into our own galaxy's history of star formation, and how the process has taken place across the vastness of space and time. "The use of the far-ultraviolet fluorescence emission technique could rewrite our understanding of the interstellar medium, uncovering hidden clouds across the galaxy and even out to the furthest detectable limits of cosmic dawn," cosmologist Thavisha Dharmawardena of New York University says. The research has been published in Nature Astronomy. This Eerie Crack of Darkness in The Sky Is Hiding a Glittering Secret Almost a Quarter of Moon Impact Debris Eventually Hits Earth NASA Reveals First-of-Its-Kind Image of Mars Rover Seen From Space
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists Intrigued by Glowing Cloud Near Our Solar System
Scientists have discovered a gigantic, glowing gas of hydrogen gas lurking just 300 light-years away. As detailed in a paper to be published in the journal Nature Astronomy, the international team of researchers spotted the crescent-shaped gas cloud, dubbed Eos, on the edge of the Local Bubble, an enormous cavity that encompasses our entire solar system. The team discovered the cloud by scanning the skies for ultraviolet emissions of molecular hydrogen, the first implementation of such a technique, which they conducted using the far-ultraviolet spectrograph attached to the South Korean satellite STSAT-1. Conventionally, researchers use radio or infrared observatories to pick up the chemical signatures. "The data showed glowing hydrogen molecules detected via fluorescence in the far ultraviolet," said Rutgers School of Arts and Sciences associate professor and team lead Blakesley Burkhart in a statement. "This cloud is literally glowing in the dark." The researchers are hoping the discovery could allow them to better understand the interstellar medium, the space between stars, and how molecular clouds of gas eventually go on to form new stars. "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," Burkhart explained. "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." Eos itself has a mass of roughly 3,400 times that of the Sun, and it could take six million years to evaporate. "The story of the cosmos is a story of the rearrangement of atoms over billions of years," Burkhart explained. "The hydrogen in Eos has been traveling for 13.6 billion years since the Big Bang." The cloud eluded scientists for so long because it doesn't emit the usual mix of carbon monoxide gases that have previously been picked up in radio and infrared observations. Meanwhile, Burkhart and her colleagues are excited about spotting far more distant clouds of hydrogen with the help of NASA's James Webb Space Telescope. As detailed in a draft paper, the team believes that "we may have found the very furthest hydrogen molecules from the Sun," Burkhart explained in the statement. "So, we have found both some of the closest and farthest using far-ultraviolet emission," she added. More on molecular clouds: Scientists Detect "Strange Filaments" at the Heart of Our Galaxy
India Today
29-04-2025
- Science
- India Today
Mysterious structure the size of 40 moons discovered close to Solar System
A mysterious structure has been discovered close to the Solar System as scientists rush to investigate its origin and evolution. The structure appears to be a star-forming region and is one of the largest single structures in the team of astronomers led by Rutgers University-New Brunswick mentioned that it is among the closest to the sun and Earth ever to be have named the molecular hydrogen cloud 'Eos,' after the Greek goddess of mythology who is the personification of dawn. The details of the findings, published in the journal Nature, state that the structure long invisible, appears to be a vast ball of hydrogen. The finding marks the first time a molecular cloud has been detected with light emitted in the far-ultraviolet realm of the electromagnetic spectrum and opens the way to further explorations using the approach. Artist's conception of what the Eos molecular cloud would look like in the sky if it were visible to the naked eye. (Photo: Rutgers) advertisement"This opens up new possibilities for studying the molecular universe. This is the first-ever molecular cloud discovered by looking for far ultraviolet emission of molecular hydrogen directly. The data showed glowing hydrogen molecules detected via fluorescence in the far ultraviolet. This cloud is literally glowing in the dark,' Blakesley Burkhart, lead author of the paper maintained that Eos poses no danger to Earth and the solar system. Because of its proximity, the gas cloud presents a unique opportunity to study the properties of a structure within the interstellar medium, scientists clouds are composed of gas and dust – with the most common molecule being hydrogen, the fundamental building block of stars and planets and essential for life. They also contain other molecules such as carbon monoxide.'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. 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,' Burkhart crescent-shaped gas cloud is located about 300 light years away from Earth. It sits on the edge of the Local Bubble, a large gas-filled cavity in space that encompasses the solar system. advertisementIt measures about 40 moons across the sky, with a mass about 3,400 times that of the sun. The team used models to show it is expected to evaporate in 6 million years.
