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[f] [154] [155] Filling the space between the stars is a disk of gas and dust called the interstellar medium. This disk has at least a comparable extent in radius to the stars, [156] whereas the thickness of the gas layer ranges from hundreds of light-years for the colder gas to thousands of light-years for warmer gas. [157] [158]
An interstellar cloud is generally an accumulation of gas, plasma, and dust in our and other galaxies. But differently, an interstellar cloud is a denser-than-average region of the interstellar medium , the matter and radiation that exists in the space between the star systems in a galaxy.
The various planets are thought to have formed from the solar nebula, the disc-shaped cloud of gas and dust left over from the Sun's formation. [36] The currently accepted method by which the planets formed is accretion, in which the planets began as dust grains in orbit around the central protostar.
To explain that volatile elements like mercury could be retained by the terrestrial planets, he postulated a moderately thick gas and dust halo shielding the planets from the Sun. To form diamonds, pure carbon crystals, moon-sized objects, and gas spheres that became gravitationally unstable would have to form in the disk, with the gas and dust ...
The cores range in mass from a fraction to several times that of the Sun and are called protostellar (protosolar) nebulae. [2] They possess diameters of 0.01–0.1 pc (2,000–20,000 AU) and a particle number density of roughly 10,000 to 100,000 cm −3. [a] [35] [37] The initial collapse of a solar-mass protostellar nebula takes around 100,000 ...
The Solar System is surrounded by the Local Interstellar Cloud, although it is not clear if it is embedded in the Local Interstellar Cloud or if it lies just outside the cloud's edge. [262] Multiple other interstellar clouds exist in the region within 300 light-years of the Sun, known as the Local Bubble. [262]
HVC – (celestial object) high-velocity cloud, an interstellar cloud with a velocity that is too high to be explained by galactic rotation; HXD – (instrumentation) Hard X-ray Detector, an instrument on the Suzaku space telescope; HVS – (celestial object) hypervelocity star or high velocity star
Just as some interstellar pressure was detected as early as 2004, some of the Sun's material seeps into the interstellar medium. [47] The heliosphere is thought to reside in the Local Interstellar Cloud inside the Local Bubble, which is a region in the Orion Arm of the Milky Way Galaxy.