A new breakthrough in understanding the formation of stars

Photos of stars taken by Hubble telescope (Photo: HTV)

The Swedish Space Company has said scientists have made a breakthrough in understanding how stars form when detecting molecular oxygen in interstellar space.

Previous attempts to detect molecular oxygen in interstellar space from observatories on Earth or in space have been lost. This group of Swedish, Canadian, Finnish and French scientists has done this for the first time thanks to information gathered from Odin Observatory.

This observatory was put into orbit in 2001. This is a Swedish satellite designed in collaboration with Canada, Finland and France to study celestial bodies and Earth's atmosphere.

Molecular oxygen was detected in a dense cloud of constellation Ophiuchus 500 light-years from Earth.

The observation lasted 33 days from August 2002 to February 2006. The study was published in Europe's Astronomy and Astrophysics weekly.