Reveal spire launch11/6/2022 Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project. They include pre-stellar clumps, protostars in various evolutionary stages and compact cores on the verge of turning into stars, as well as fully-fledged stars and the bubbles carved by their highly energetic radiation. The images provide an unprecedented view of the Galactic Plane, ranging from diffuse interstellar material to denser filamentary structures of gas and dust that fragment into clumps where star formation sets in. With a dynamical range of at least two orders of magnitude, these maps reveal the emission by diffuse material as well as huge filamentary structures and individual, point-like sources scattered across the images. #Reveal spire launch series#Over the past two years, the Hi-GAL team has processed the data to obtain a series of calibrated maps of extraordinary quality and resolution. Its aim was to map the entire disc of the Milky Way, where most of its stars form and reside, in five of Herschel's wavelength channels: 70, 160, 250, 350 and 500 μm. The Herschel infrared Galactic Plane Survey (Hi-GAL) is the largest of all observing programmes carried out with Herschel, in terms of both observing time – over 900 hours of total observations, equivalent to almost 40 days – and sky coverage – about 800 square degrees, or two percent of the entire sky. Observations in this portion of the electromagnetic spectrum are sensitive to some of the coldest objects in the Universe, including cosmic dust, a minor but crucial component of the interstellar material from which stars are born. Credit: ESA/Herschel/PACS, SPIRE/Hi-GAL Project.ĭuring its four years of operations (2009-2013), the Herschel space observatory scanned the sky at far-infrared and sub-millimetre wavelengths. These maps and catalogues will be very valuable resources for astronomers, to exploit scientifically and for planning follow-up studies of particularly interesting regions in the Galactic Plane. This is accompanied by a set of catalogues listing hundreds of thousands of compact sources that span all phases leading to the birth of stars in our Galaxy. New Herschel maps and catalogues reveal stellar nurseries across the Galactic PlaneĮSA's Herschel mission releases today a series of unprecedented maps of star-forming hubs in the plane of our Milky Way galaxy.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply.AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |