Composite infrared and radio image of 30 Doradus
Radio image of the 30 Doradus nebula with data from ALMA
Infrared image of 30 Doradus
Tarantula Nebula region in the constellation of Doradus
Videos
Zooming-in on the Tarantula Nebula with radio wavelengths
Astronomers have unveiled intricate
details of the star-forming region 30 Doradus, also known as the
Tarantula Nebula, using new observations from the Atacama Large
Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). In a high-resolution image
released today by the European Southern Observatory (ESO) and including
ALMA data, we see the nebula in a new light, with wispy gas clouds that
provide insight into how massive stars shape this region.
“These fragments may be the remains of once-larger
clouds that have been shredded by the enormous energy being released by
young and massive stars, a process dubbed feedback,” says Tony
Wong, who led the research on 30 Doradus presented today at the American
Astronomical Society (AAS) meeting and published inThe Astrophysical Journal.
Astronomers originally thought the gas in these areas would be too
sparse and too overwhelmed by this turbulent feedback for gravity to
pull it together to form new stars. But the new data also reveal much
denser filaments where gravity’s role is still significant. “Our
results imply that even in the presence of very strong feedback, gravity
can exert a strong influence and lead to a continuation of star
formation,” adds Wong, who is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA.
Located in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy
of our own Milky Way, the Tarantula Nebula is one of the brightest and
most active star-forming regions in our galactic neighbourhood, lying
about 170 000 light-years away from Earth. At its heart are some of the
most massive stars known, a few with more than 150 times the mass of our
Sun, making the region perfect for studying how gas clouds collapse
under gravity to form new stars.
"What makes 30 Doradus unique is that it is close
enough for us to study in detail how stars are forming, and yet its
properties are similar to those found in very distant galaxies, when the
Universe was young,” said Guido De Marchi, a scientist at the
European Space Agency (ESA) and a co-author of the paper presenting the
new research. “Thanks to 30 Doradus, we can study how stars used to form 10 billion years ago when most stars were born."
While most of the previous studies of the Tarantula Nebula
have focused on its centre, astronomers have long known that massive
star formation is happening elsewhere too. To better understand this
process, the team conducted high-resolution observations covering a
large region of the nebula. Using ALMA,
they measured the emission of light from carbon monoxide gas. This
allowed them to map the large, cold gas clouds in the nebula that
collapse to give birth to new stars — and how they change as huge
amounts of energy are released by those young stars.
“We were expecting to find that parts of the cloud
closest to the young massive stars would show the clearest signs of
gravity being overwhelmed by feedback,” says Wong. “We found
instead that gravity is still important in these feedback-exposed
regions — at least for parts of the cloud that are sufficiently dense.”
In the image released today by ESO, we see the new ALMA
data overlaid on a previous infrared image of the same region that shows
bright stars and light pinkish clouds of hot gas, taken with ESO’s Very
Large Telescope (VLT) and ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA).
The composition shows the distinct, web-like shape of the Tarantula
Nebula’s gas clouds that gave rise to its spidery name. The new ALMA
data comprise the bright red-yellow streaks in the image: very cold and
dense gas that could one day collapse and form stars.
The new research contains detailed clues about how gravity
behaves in the Tarantula Nebula’s star-forming regions, but the work is
far from finished. “There is still much more to do with this
fantastic data set, and we are releasing it publicly to encourage other
researchers to conduct new investigations,” Wong concludes.
More Information
This research is being presented at the 240th meeting of
the American Astronomical Society (AAS) in the press conference titled
"Stars, Their Environments & Their Planets” (Wednesday, 15 June,
19:15 CEST / 10:15 PT). Reporters are welcome to watch the live stream
of the press conference, which will be visible publicly on the AAS Press
Office YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/AASPressOffice.
The research is also presented in the paper “The 30 Doradus Molecular Cloud at 0.4 Parsec Resolution with ALMA: Physical Properties and the Boundedness of CO Emitting Structures” (https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.3847/1538-4357/ac723a) to appear in The Astrophysical Journal.
The team is composed of T. Wong (Astronomy Department,
University of Illinois, USA [Illinois]), L. Oudshoorn (Leiden
Observatory, Leiden University, The Netherlands [Leiden]), E. Sofovich
(Illinois), A. Green (Illinois), C. Shah (Illinois), R. Indebetouw
(Department of Astronomy, University of Virginia, USA and National Radio
Astronomy Observatory, USA [NRAO]), M. Meixner (SOFIA-USRA, NASA Ames
Research Center, USA), A. Hacar (Department of Astrophysics, University
of Vienna, Austria), O. Nayak (Space Telescope Science Institute, USA
[STSci]), K. Tokuda (Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Faculty
of Sciences, Kyushu University, Japan and National Astronomical
Observatory of Japan, National Institutes of Natural Sciences, Japan and
Department of Physics, Graduate School of Science, Osaka Metropolitan
University, Japan [Osaka]), A. D. Bolatto (Department of Astronomy and
Joint Space Science Institute, University of Maryland, USA and NRAO
Visiting Astronomer), M. Chevance (Astronomisches Rechen-Institut,
Zentrum für Astronomie der Universität Heidelberg, Germany), G. De
Marchi (European Space Research and Technology Centre, Netherlands), Y.
Fukui (Department of Physics, Nagoya University, Japan), A. S.
Hirschauer (STSci), K. E. Jameson (CSIRO, Space and Astronomy,
Australia), V. Kalari (International Gemini Observatory, NSF’s NOIRLab,
Chile), V. Lebouteiller (AIM, CEA, CNRS, Université Paris-Saclay,
Université Paris Diderot, France), L. W. Looney (Illinois), S. C. Madden
(Departement d’Astrophysique AIM/CEA Saclay, France), Toshikazu Onishi
(Osaka), J. Roman-Duval (STSci), M. Rubio (Departamento de Astronomía,
Universidad de Chile, Chile) and A. G. G. M. Tielens (Department of
Astronomy, University of Maryland, USA and Leiden).
The European Southern Observatory (ESO) enables scientists
worldwide to discover the secrets of the Universe for the benefit of
all. We design, build and operate world-class observatories on the
ground — which astronomers use to tackle exciting questions and spread
the fascination of astronomy — and promote international collaboration
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today ESO is supported by 16 Member States (Austria, Belgium, the Czech
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while the Chilean Atacama Desert, a marvellous place with unique
conditions to observe the sky, hosts our telescopes. ESO operates three
observing sites: La Silla, Paranal and Chajnantor. At Paranal, ESO
operates the Very Large Telescope and its Very Large Telescope
Interferometer, as well as two survey telescopes, VISTA working in the
infrared and the visible-light VLT Survey Telescope. Also at Paranal ESO
will host and operate the Cherenkov Telescope Array South, the world’s
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biggest eye on the sky” — ESO’s Extremely Large Telescope. From our
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engage with Chilean partners and society.
The Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), an
international astronomy facility, is a partnership of ESO, the U.S.
National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Institutes of Natural
Sciences (NINS) of Japan in cooperation with the Republic of Chile.
ALMA is funded by ESO on behalf of its Member States, by NSF in
cooperation with the National Research Council of Canada (NRC) and the
Ministry of Science and Technology (MOST) and by NINS in cooperation
with the Academia Sinica (AS) in Taiwan and the Korea Astronomy and
Space Science Institute (KASI). ALMA construction and operations are led
by ESO on behalf of its Member States; by the National Radio Astronomy
Observatory (NRAO), managed by Associated Universities, Inc. (AUI), on
behalf of North America; and by the National Astronomical Observatory of
Japan (NAOJ) on behalf of East Asia. The Joint ALMA Observatory (JAO)
provides the unified leadership and management of the construction,
commissioning and operation of ALMA.
Links
- Research paper
- NRAO press release
- Photos of ALMA
- Photos of VISTA
- Photos of the VLT
- Other images of the Tarantula Nebula region
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Contacts:
Tony Wong
Astronomy Department, University of Illinois
Urbana-Champaign, IL, USA
Tel: +1 217 244 4207
Email: wongt@illinois.edu
Guido De Marchi
European Space Research and Technology Centre, European Space Agency
Noordwijk, Netherlands
Tel: +31 71 565 8332
Cell: +31 6 5081 6906
Email: gdemarchi@esa.int
Bárbara Ferreira
ESO Media Manager
Garching bei München, Germany
Tel: +49 89 3200 6670
Cell: +49 151 241 664 00
Email: press@eso.org
Source: ESO/News
