“There are many mysteries we want to unravel,” says Kathryn Kreckel from the University of Heidelberg in Germany and PHANGS team member. The resulting images are stunning, offering a spectacularly colorful insight into stellar nurseries in our neighboring galaxies. “We can directly observe the gas that gives birth to stars, we see the young stars themselves, and we witness their evolution through various phases.”īy combining MUSE and ALMA images astronomers can examine the galactic regions where star formation is happening, compared to where it is expected to happen, so as to better understand what triggers, boosts or holds back the birth of new stars. “For the first time we are resolving individual units of star formation over a wide range of locations and environments in a sample that well represents the different types of galaxies,” says Eric Emsellem, an astronomer at ESO in Germany and lead of the VLT-based observations conducted as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) project. NGC 1087 as seen with MUSE on ESO’s VLT at several wavelengths of light. ![]() NGC 1087 as seen with the VLT and ALMA at several wavelengths of light. NGC 1300 as seen with MUSE on ESO’s VLT at several wavelengths of light. ![]() ![]() NGC 1300 as seen with the VLT and ALMA at several wavelengths of light. NGC 3627 as seen with MUSE on ESO’s VLT at several wavelengths of light. NGC 3627 as seen with the VLT and ALMA at several wavelengths of light. NGC 4254 as seen with MUSE on ESO’s VLT at several wavelengths of light. NGC 4254 as seen with the VLT and ALMA at several wavelengths of light. NGC 4303 as seen with MUSE on ESO’s VLT at several wavelengths of light. NGC 4303 as seen with the VLT and ALMA at several wavelengths of light. To understand this process, a team of researchers has observed various nearby galaxies with powerful telescopes on the ground and in space, scanning the different galactic regions involved in stellar births. By combining these new observations with data from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array ( ALMA), in which ESO is a partner, the team is helping shed new light on what triggers gas to form stars.Īstronomers know that stars are born in clouds of gas, but what sets off star formation, and how galaxies as a whole play into it, remains a mystery. The images, obtained with the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope ( ESO’s VLT), show different components of the galaxies in distinct colors, allowing astronomers to pinpoint the locations of young stars and the gas they warm up around them. Credit: ESO/PHANGSĪ team of astronomers has released new observations of nearby galaxies that resemble colorful cosmic fireworks. The images were taken as part of the Physics at High Angular resolution in Nearby GalaxieS (PHANGS) project, which is making high-resolution observations of nearby galaxies with telescopes operating across the electromagnetic spectrum. ![]() The golden glows mainly correspond to clouds of ionized hydrogen, oxygen, and sulfur gas, marking the presence of newly born stars, while the bluish regions in the background reveal the distribution of slightly older stars. Each individual image is a combination of observations conducted at different wavelengths of light to map stellar populations and warm gas. This image combines observations of the nearby galaxies NGC 1300, NGC 1087, NGC 3627 (top, from left to right), NGC 4254 and NGC 4303 (bottom, from left to right) taken with the Multi-Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT).
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