This image from ESA’s Herschel Space Observatory shows a giant “star nursery” where new stars are continuously born. The image is a PACS/SPIRE three colors composite (blue=70um, green=160um, red=250um) in the constellation of Vulpecula.
The diffuse glow reveals the widespread cold reservoir of raw material which our Milky Way galaxy has in stock for the production of new stars. Large-scale turbulence possibly due to giant colliding.
Galactic flows causes this material to condense into the web of filaments that we see throughout the image, and that will act as “incubators” where the material becomes colder and denser.
Eventually gravitational forces will take over and fragment these filaments into chains of stellar embryos that can finally collapse to form infant stars.
(pic: ESA/PACS & SPIRE Consortium, Sergio Molinari, Hi-GAL Project)
