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Astrophysics

Less greedy galaxies gulp gas

Nature volume 463, pages 745–746 (2010)Cite this article

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The cool molecular gas from which stars form has been detected in relatively ordinary faraway galaxies. The results point to a continuous fuelling of gas into the star-forming guts of assembling galaxies.

Stars form in the regions of galaxies that are the hardest to observe with many of the common tools of astronomy — in dense, cool (10–100 K) clouds of molecular gas from which only a small fraction of visible light can escape. Once stars form, the pressure of their radiation expels this gas, and they can then be seen clearly at optical wavelengths. Directly imaging the gas that fuels star formation requires observations of the radiation emitted by rotating or vibrating molecules at long and short infrared wavelengths, respectively, where the clouds are more transparent. However, only polarized molecules, such as carbon monoxide (CO), emit strong rotational spectral lines: the bulk of gas mass remains invisible in the form of molecular hydrogen. Nevertheless, the measured width and shape of the CO spectral lines can be combined with assumptions about the distribution of emitting gas, along with all the gravitating matter in the galaxy that controls the motion of the gas, to estimate the unseen mass.

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Figure 1: Many eyes see more detail.

REBUS/IRAM

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  1. Andrew Blain is at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125, USA. awb@astro.caltech.edu ,

    Andrew Blain

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  1. Andrew Blain
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Blain, A. Less greedy galaxies gulp gas. Nature 463, 745–746 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1038/463745a

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