Nebula RCW 106: Star Formation Region | ESO APEX & VLT

Nebula RCW 106: Star Formation Region | ESO APEX & VLT

This image shows a red, cloudy region spanning across a cluttered backdrop of thousands of blue stars. Notice areas, including in the upper left and center of the image, that are highlighted with orange and yellow filaments.

The glowing red clouds seen in this picture shows dense gas regions where new stars are being born in the RCW 106 region. However, only 1% of this gas will actually go on to create stars, and astronomers do not know why this percentage is so low.

Star formation takes place when regions of these huge clouds of cold gas are able to clump together. Once they reach a critical density, they will collapse into newborn stars. An outstanding question is whether even denser regions can produce greater numbers of stars. Could this help to explain the 1% mystery?

New results from the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics, suggest this is not the case—denser regions are not more efficient at forming stars. This is perhaps explained by the way these denser clouds fragment into filamentary structures and cores where stars will form, but many questions remain unanswered. This picture highlights areas of interest. It imposes a red map of dense gas, imaged with the ArTéMiS camera at APEX, over an optical image taken with the VLT Survey Telescope. 

While APEX continues to investigate this stellar mystery, we can expect to see many more stunning images like this.

Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)/M. Mattern et al.

Release Date: Aug. 19, 2024

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