EFE / Berlin
A telescope at the European Southern Observatory (ESO) has captured images of nearby galaxies that resemble colorful cosmic fireworks and will help astronomers discover what triggers the gas to form stars.
Images obtained with ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile show different components of galaxies in different colors, allowing scientists to identify the locations of young stars and the gas they heat around them, ESO reported. it’s a statement.
The combination of these images with data from the Atacama Large Millimeter / submillimeter Array (ALMA), of which the European observatory is a partner, helps the team to know what causes the gas to end up forming stars, since although the astronomical community knows that they are born In gas clouds, it is not yet known what triggers the star formation process and what role galaxies play.
To understand this process, astronomers observed several nearby galaxies with telescopes on earth and in space, surveying the different galactic regions involved in star births.
“For the first time we are solving individual units of star formation in a wide range of locations and environments within a sample that represents the different types of galaxies well,” said ESO astronomer Eric Emsellem.
