SPACE Astronomers witness star formation

Researchers have gained a window onto the early universe.
MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL
MILWAUKEE -- Although recent storms and winds may have had Midwesterners throwing up their arms, they should thank their lucky stars they are not in the middle of galaxy M82.
It's 10 million light years away and it's caught in the middle of a cosmic storm -- a weather system, powered by stellar explosions, causing 1 million-mile-per-hour winds that shoot massive jets of hot gas, tens of thousands of light years long, into intergalactic space.
Try containing that in an underground tunnel.
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University College London have identified the eye -- rather, eyes -- of this galactic hurricane using images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and the WIYN Telescope at Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona.
And the combined images have led the scientists to believe the gas is erupting from a multitude of star clusters funneling a torrent of gas out of the galaxy.
What it is
The winds are the result of these massive stars forming and then, poof, exploding, said Jay Gallagher, a professor of astronomy at the University of Wisconsin, and one of the investigators.
The point of observing such phenomena, he said, is to learn "about a strange stage in the evolution" of stars and galaxies.
Using telescopes and other instruments to look deep into space, astronomers are able to trace the evolution of the universe; the further away the object is in space, the older the events.
So, for Galaxy M82, which is 10 million light years away, the images that are feeding back to the telescopes are that old.
"It's kind of like if you had a video camera trained on a tidal pool 4 billion years ago," said Robert O'Connell, a professor of astronomy at the University of Virginia. "You'd be able to go back and watch evolution in the process."
Unfamiliar type
These new images are affording scientists a look at a particular kind of star formation, allowing them to take a glimpse at the conditions and triggers under which certain kinds of stars and galaxies are formed.
"The clump star formation mode is not a familiar one," said Gallagher, referring to the M82 pattern. Instead, "the 'lazy' star formation" of our own Milky Way galaxy is what has most commonly been observed.
"It's kind of like thinking Wisconsin and its population density is the norm, and then going to Japan," Gallagher said.
But as astronomers' ability to look at things deeper and deeper into the universe has increased, starburst galaxies, such as M82, seem to be somewhat more common than previously thought.
Window
Indeed, Gallagher said these new images offer astronomers a window to the early universe, when star production was "going gangbusters."
And at least in the case of M82, the event that triggered these massive eruptions seems to have been a near, or minor, collision with a neighboring galaxy called M81.
"This research is important in establishing the history" of galaxies, said Gerald Cecil, a professor of physics and astronomy at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Two galaxies sweeping by each other can agitate the gases within them, said Cecil. And "that seems to be critical for the fireworks" observed spurting out of M82.
The research also highlights the effectiveness of bringing together data retrieved from two different sources -- the Hubble and WIYN telescopes -- to form a comprehensive and detailed image of galactic goings-on.