The team revealed never-before-seen details of the Fire Nebula.
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — A team of astronomers using the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX) telescope captured star-forming regions in radio wavelengths. Team reveals details Nebula Api never seen before.
The Fire Nebula, which is close to the famous Horsehead Nebula, is part of the Orion Molecular Cloud Complex, located in the constellation Orion. Constellation Orion is one of the most studied and imaged regions of the night sky.
“As astronomers often say, whenever there is a new telescope or instrument around, take a look at Orion: there will always be something new and exciting to discover!” said astronomer Thomas Stanke of the European Southern Observatory (ESO). Sciencealert, Tuesday (18/1/2022)
The Orion complex is a large series of star-forming nebulae that stretch hundreds of light-years in all directions, starting from about 1,000 light-years from the Solar System. Because it is so close (cosmically) and so large, it is an excellent laboratory for studying how stars are born.
The Fire Nebula is one of the many stellar nurseries in the complex. These are classified as emission nebulae, i.e. nebulae that emit their own light in contrast to reflection nebulae, which only shine with reflected starlight, and even nebulae, which do not shine at all but cast shadows across the sky like a chasm in the cosmos.
What makes the emission nebula shine is the ionization of gas in the nebula by bright radiation from a nearby hot star. Because young stars are often very hot, stellar nurseries tend to shine brightly. The Fire Nebula is home to a cluster of hundreds of newly formed stars, concentrated at its center.
But stars are born in dense clouds of dust and gas, which tend to obscure stars in optical wavelengths. Instruments like the APEX, which capture images in radio wavelengths, can capture details that our eyes cannot see.
In their observations of the Orion complex, Stanke and his colleagues were able to track molecular outflows, strong winds pushed out into interstellar space by star formation processes, and map molecular gases in different regions of the nebula.
The researchers also discovered a nebula that no one had seen before, almost perfectly circular, showing a spherical cloud containing no stars. They refer to this object as the orb Cow Nebula. They believe the nebula can be used to study cloud structure and dynamics, although further observations are needed to better understand the nebula’s basic nature.
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