July 9, 2012

At the heart of a star nursery

Herschel satellite was able to "shoot" a reservoir of interstellar matter in the Vela constellation. It is the first time that the scientific community collect so precise images of this region, where many stars are forming.

 ESA/PACS/SPIRE/Tracey Hill & Frédérique Motte, Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay, CEA/Irfu - CNRS/INSU - Univ. Paris Diderot, France
Vela-C molecular cloud
Copyright: ESA/PACS/SPIRE/Tracey Hill & Frédérique Motte,
Laboratoire AIM Paris-Saclay,
CEA/Irfu - CNRS/INSU - Univ. Paris Diderot, France

Thanks to Herschel space telescope detection tools, the image above reveales the details of the cold mixture of interstellar matter (gas and dusts), present in the region. In red the more dense and coldest (-250°C) portions appear taken by Herschel. The cloud is organized in a network of sub-structures, with a mixture of diffuse matter and better defined and elongated filaments. You can see on the left "packets" of material organized in a tangled nest, related to each other by thick interstellar filaments.

Read the article on Herschel.fr web site (in French)
Read also the article on ESA web site