The Tarantula Nebula or NGC 2070 (also 30 Doradus) is located in the southern constellation of Dorado, about 170,000 light-years away from Earth . It is a luminous star-forming region in the Large Magellanic Cloud, a satellite galaxy of the Milky Way. And at its heart are some of the most massive stars known, some with more than 150 times the mass of our Sun, which is why it is an area of special interest to astronomers.
“The fragmentary clouds in the new image may be the remnants of once-larger clouds that have been shredded by the enormous energy released by young, massive stars, a process called feedback,” said Tony Wong, an astronomer at the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign in his study that has been collected by The Astrophysical Journal.
Astronomers initially thought that the gas in these areas would be too thin for gravity to pull it in to form new stars, but the new data also reveals much denser filaments where gravity’s role is still really significant.
“Our results imply that even in the presence of very strong feedback, gravity can exert a strong influence and lead to the continuation of star formation,” said Wong.
“What makes the Tarantula Nebula unique is that it is close enough for us to study in detail how stars form, and yet its properties are similar to those found in very distant galaxies, when the universe was young” , added Guido De Marchi, ESA astronomer. “Thanks to 30 Doradus, we can study how stars formed 10 billion years ago, when most stars were born.”
Using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), scientists measured the emission of light from carbon monoxide gas, which allowed them to map the large clouds of cold gas in the nebula that collapse to give birth to new stars, and how they change as those young stars release large amounts of energy.
“We found that gravity remains important in these feedback-exposed regions, at least for parts of the cloud that are dense enough,” the experts conclude.
Referencia: Tony Wong et al. 2022. The 30 Doradus Molecular Cloud at 0.4 pc Resolution with the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array: Physical Properties and the Boundedness of CO-emitting Structures. ApJ 932, 47; doi: 10.3847/1538-4357/ac723a
ESO / ALMA / NAOJ / NRAO / Wong et al. / M.-R. Cioni / VISTA Magellanic Cloud Survey / Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit.
