Where Did the Interstellar Medium Come From?

December 18, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / Leave a comment

Contrary to popular belief, space is not empty. The space between the stars is filled with clouds of dust and gas. And this space—the interstellar medium—is incredibly beautiful and fascinating.

I often refer to the interstellar medium as the galaxy’s “backstage.” Why? Because it’s not the part of the universe that astronomy enthusiasts usually think about. And yet, there are whole studies devoted to studying this natural wonder of the universe.

Also, the interstellar medium is largely hidden from us. There are ways we can detect it—when light from a distant star passes through it, for example. And with our eyes, we can see nebulae, the visible evidence of this interstellar expanse.

The backstage of a theater is similar—it’s not the main part of the show, but you sometimes see evidence of it in the forms of new costumes donned as the play progresses and new props brought into play. The audience often forgets about it entirely.

Nevertheless, it’s beautiful. Stars are born out of giant molecular clouds, triggered by compression from expanding bubbles of coronal gas. The interstellar medium spells our beginning.

But how did it get there?

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What are Molecular Clouds?

October 2, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 4 Comments

Meet the Pillars of Creation, a photograph taken by the Hubble Telescope in 1995. These apparent “pillars” of dust and gas are what we call molecular clouds. And this region of clouds in space is aptly named: it’s where stars are created.

Technically, there are two types of molecular clouds—molecular clouds and giant molecular clouds, or GMCs—but I’ll get into that in a second.

Molecular clouds are deep within the interstellar medium. In case you don’t remember the ISM from my “recent” posts (sorry about that), it’s the stuff between the stars. It’s the galaxy’s backstage. Space is in fact not a perfect vacuum—it’s full of the ISM.

So what’s going on with molecular clouds like the Pillars of Creation?

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What is a Nebula Made of?

June 18, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / Leave a comment

What you see here is the Trifid Nebula, a vast cloud of gas and dust in space.

In my last post, we explored why it looks the way it does. We discovered that the pink hues of emission nebulae are caused when extremely hot nearby stars “excite” the gas of the nebula itself to emit its own light, which our eyes perceive as pink.

The haze of blue to the right, on the other hand, is the result of light from hot young stars nearby getting scattered among the nebula’s dust particles. It looks blue for the same reason the sky looks blue. We call nebulae like this reflection nebulae.

And the black wisps of dark nebulae are hardly as ominous as they look; they’re simply ordinary clouds of gas and dust, ordinary nebulae, that we can only see because they’re silhouetted by brighter objects in the background.

But nebulae, for all their different names, are actually a heck of a lot more similar than you might think.

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What is a Nebula?

June 14, 2018November 23, 2022 / Emma / 3 Comments

What’s a nebula?

Well…you’re looking at one.

Okay, okay, I know. You want to know what that actually is. You want to know why it’s there. You want to know why there are colors in space…and why you’ve never noticed such a thing in your own night sky before.

Nebulae are the stuff between the stars. They’re the galaxy’s backstage. They’re the only visible evidence of a vast expanse of gas and dust between the stars, completely invisible to the human eye, called the interstellar medium.

Nebulae are the sites of star birth. Planets form from the dusty particles present in these glowing space clouds. They’re the galaxy’s way of replenishing itself. And they’re pretty cool to look at, too.

But how come they look the way they do?

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