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A molecular cloud, sometimes called a stellar nursery (if star formation is occurring within), is a type of interstellar cloud, the density and size of which permit absorption nebulae, the formation of molecules (most commonly molecular hydrogen, H 2), and the formation of H II regions. This is in contrast to other areas of the interstellar ...
The Orion molecular cloud complex (or, simply, the Orion complex) is a star-forming region with stellar ages ranging up to 12 Myr. Two giant molecular clouds are a part of it, Orion A and Orion B. The stars currently forming within the complex are located within these clouds. A number of other somewhat older stars no longer associated with the ...
Sagittarius B2. Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2) is a giant molecular cloud of gas and dust that is located about 120 parsecs (390 ly) from the center of the Milky Way. This complex is the largest molecular cloud in the vicinity of the core and one of the largest in the galaxy, spanning a region about 45 parsecs (150 ly) across. [2]
Star formation. Star formation is the process by which dense regions within molecular clouds in interstellar space, sometimes referred to as "stellar nurseries" or " star -forming regions", collapse and form stars. [1] As a branch of astronomy, star formation includes the study of the interstellar medium (ISM) and giant molecular clouds (GMC ...
There is evidence that the formation of the Solar System began about 4.6 billion years ago with the gravitational collapse of a small part of a giant molecular cloud. [ 1 ] Most of the collapsing mass collected in the center, forming the Sun, while the rest flattened into a protoplanetary disk out of which the planets, moons, asteroids, and ...
The visible-light (left) and infrared (right) views of the Trifid Nebula—a giant star-forming cloud of gas and dust located 5,400 light-years away in the constellation Sagittarius Stars are thought to form inside giant clouds of cold molecular hydrogen — giant molecular clouds roughly 300,000 times the mass of the Sun ( M ☉ ) and 20 ...
Stellar evolution starts with the gravitational collapse of a giant molecular cloud. Typical giant molecular clouds are roughly 100 light-years (9.5 × 10 14 km) across and contain up to 6,000,000 solar masses (1.2 × 10 37 kg). As it collapses, a giant molecular cloud breaks into smaller and smaller pieces.
v. t. e. The Jeans instability is a concept in astrophysics that describes an instability that leads to the gravitational collapse of a cloud of gas or dust. [1] It causes the collapse of interstellar gas clouds and subsequent star formation. It occurs when the internal gas pressure is not strong enough to prevent the gravitational collapse of ...