Astronomers discovered a huge, spherical cavity in the Milky Way galaxy. Its location is shown on the right. Zoomed-in view of the cavity (left), shows the Perseus molecular clouds and Taurus molecular cloud in blue and red, respectively. Although they seem to touch the cavity, 3D images of new clouds reveal that they border the cavity. This image was created in glue with the WorldWide Telescope. Credit: Alyssa Greatman/Center for Astrophysics at Harvard & Smithsonian.
Astronomers have found a huge cavity in space by analysing 3D maps of the shape and size of nearby molecular cloud structures.
Today's Astrophysical Journal Letters describes a sphere-shaped cavity that spans 150 parsecs. It is approximately 500 light years across and can be found on the sky between the constellations Perseus & Taurus. Harvard & Smithsonian, believes the cavity was formed by ancient supernovae that went off some 10 million years ago.
The mysterious cavity is surrounded in the Taurus and Perseus molecular cloudsregions of space where stars form.
Shmuel Bialy (postdoctoral researcher, Institute for Theory and Computation at the Center for Astrophysics), who led the study, said that hundreds of stars were already forming at the surface. We have two theories: either one supernova exploded at the core and pushed gas outward, forming the "Perseus-Taurus Supershell", or a series supernovae that occurred over many millions of years.
This finding shows that the Perseus-Taurus molecular cloud is not an independent structure in space. They were formed from the same supernova shockwave. Bialy explained that this shows that when a star is killed, its supernova creates a chain that could eventually lead to the birth new stars.
Mapping Stellar Nurseries
The European Space Agency (ESA) launched Gaia, a space-based observatory that created the 3D map of the bubbles and surrounding clouds.
In a separate paper published in the Astrophysical journal (ApJ), descriptions of how 3D maps of the Perseus, Taurus molecular cloud and other clouds were analysed are provided. Both studies use a dust reconstruction that was created by German researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy.
These maps are the first time that molecular clouds were mapped in 3D. The previous images of the cloud were limited to two dimensions.
Astronomers have found a large, spherical cavity in space after studying 3D maps of interstellar Dust. This discovery proves that supernovae were responsible for the formation of the Perseus-Taurus molecular cloud. Credit: Jasen Chambers/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
"We have been able to see the clouds for many decades, but we didn't know their true shapes, depths, or thickness. Catherine Zucker, a postdoctoral researcher at CfA, who led the ApJ study, says that we were also unsure of the distance they were from us. "Now, we know where they are with just 1 percent uncertainty. This allows us to see the void between them."
Why are map clouds necessary?
Zucker says that there are many theories about how gas rearranges itself in order to form stars. These theories have been tested by astronomers using simulations in the past. But this is the first time that realnot simulated3D views can be used to evaluate which theories are most effective.
The Universe is at your Fingertips
This is the first time that journals of the American Astronomical Society have published augmented reality astronomy visualizations. Scientists and the general public can interact with the visualization by scanning the QR code on the paper using their smartphones.
Alyssa Goodman is a Harvard professor and CfA Astronomer. She co-authored both studies and was the founder of glue, the data visualization program that was used in the creation of the maps of molecular cloud.
Goodman refers to the new publications as the "papers of the future", and sees them as important steps towards interactivity and reproducibility in science. This is what AAS committed to in 2015.
Goodman states that "we need richer records for scientific discovery." Current scholarly papers could do much better. Harvard's Dataverses makes all of these papers available online so that everyone can use our data."
Goodman sees future scientific articles in which audio, video, and enhanced visuals will be included regularly, so that all readers can better understand the research.
She said, "It is 3D visualizations such as these that can help scientists and the general public understand what's going on in space and the powerful effects supernovae have."
Further Herschel-Planck views of star formations
