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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.
Stars form by gravitational collapse of interstellar gas clouds. As the collapse increases the density, radiative energy loss decreases due to increased opacity. This raises the temperature of the cloud which prevents further collapse, and a hydrostatic equilibrium is established. Gas continues to fall towards the core in a rotating disk.
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 ...
As this collapsing cloud, called a solar nebula, becomes denser, random gas motions originally present in the cloud average out in favor of the direction of the nebula's net angular momentum. Conservation of angular momentum causes the rotation to increase as the nebula radius decreases. This rotation causes the cloud to flatten out—much like ...
The W51 nebula in Aquila - one of the largest star factories in the Milky Way (August 25, 2020). 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]
Map showing the Sun located near the edge of the Local Interstellar Cloud and Alpha Centauri about 4 light-years away in the neighboring G-Cloud complex Interstellar medium and astrosphere meeting. Astronomers describe the ISM as turbulent, meaning that the gas has quasi-random motions coherent over a large range of spatial scales.
NASA released the first complete set of images from the James Webb Space Telescope, including stars in their infancy and their final gasps.
The expanding shell of gas forms a supernova remnant, a special diffuse nebula. [25] Although much of the optical and X-ray emission from supernova remnants originates from ionized gas, a great amount of the radio emission is a form of non-thermal emission called synchrotron emission. [25]