Discovered newborn stars at the center of the galaxy

Astronomers have finally discovered newborn stars at the turbulent center of the Milky Way. This finding was made possible by infrared observations of NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope.

The heart of our spiral galaxy is the center of stars, dust and gas; and at the center of it is an enormous black hole. The conditions here are harsh, with fierce stellar winds, strong shock waves and other factors that make star formation very difficult. Astronomers still know that stars can form in this chaotic area, but still don't understand how this happens. The main problem is the layers of dust between us and the center of the galaxy.So far, no one has ever identified the exact location of a newborn star.

Solange Ramirez, head of research at NASA's Exoplanet Planetary Science Institute, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, said: 'These stars are like needles in a haystack. They cannot be found using conventional optical light, because dust will block. We need NASA infrared equipment to go through the dust to reach the objects we need to observe. '

The team plans to look for other newborn stars in the future, and finally determine which conditions allow stars to form in harsh environments at the center of our galaxy.

Deokkeun An of the Center for Infrared Analysis and Processing at Caltech, the lead author of the article published in the Astrophysical Journal, said: ' By studying individual stars at the center of the galaxy, they are We will better understand the formation of stars in different environments. Milky Way galaxy is just one of more than hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe. However, our galaxy is very special because we can look more closely at each individual star component '. An started working for this program when he was a graduate student at Ohio State University.

The center of the Milky Way is a mysterious area about 600 light-years across. This is only a very small part of the entire Milky Way galaxy, about 100,000 light-years wide, but this central region contains up to 10% of the entire galaxy's gas, and many stars.

The infrared image from NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope shows three newborn stars in the center of the Milky Way galaxy.(Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech)

Previously, there were only a few clues about star formation at the center of the galaxy.Astronomers discovered young star clusters, in addition to cloud of charged gas - a sign that new stars start stimulating and ionizing the surrounding gas. Efforts to find new stars have yet to achieve success.

Ramirez and his colleagues began their search by using Spitzer to scan the entire galaxy center. They identified more than 100 candidates, but needed more detailed data to confirm the stars ' identity '. Young stars, when viewed from a distance, may look like much older stars. Both types of stars are full of dust, and the dust that lies between us and the stars will obscure the view.

To solve this problem, astronomers observed ' candidates ' with Spitzer's spectrometer - a device that breaks down light into ' rainbow colors ' - like a sequence of infrared colors. . The molecules around the stars leave traces in their light, and the spectrometer can detect these traces.

The results show that 3 stars with clear signs are at a very young age, for example some thick and warm gases. These characteristics are found in other areas of the galaxy where stars are formed.

Ramierz said: 'It's amazing how we found these stars. The center of the galaxy is a very interesting area. It contains young stars, old stars, black holes, and everything. We started sorting about 1 million sources and finally found 3 young stars - the stars that helped reveal the secret of the Milky Way galaxy center '.

These young star objects are aged less than 1 million years. They are in gas and dust covers, and in theory these gas and dust wraps will eventually become disks to form the planet.

Other collaborators of the study include Richard Arendt of NASA's Goddard Space Center, Greenbelt, Md .;AC Adwin Boogert of NASA's Herschel Science Center, Caltech in Pasadena;Mathias Schultheis of Angela Observatory, SETI Academy, Mountain View, Calif;and Thomas Robitaille and Howard Smith of the Harvard Smithsonian Center, Cambridge, Mass.