The Anatomy of a Stellar Nursery

The Anatomy of a Stellar Nursery

Introducing the Rosette Nebula / Stellar Nursery When I first started to image stellar nurseries, I really didn’t know anything about them.  I was told that stars are being born there – that is pretty awesome, but I was curious what was it about these light generating molecular clouds (MCs) that made them prolific star builders.   Sure, stars are also created in turbulent dark molecular clouds, but stellar nurseries really churn out the stars at a much higher level – often creating whole open clusters of stars.   Many of the stellar nurseries get very large and can even be mapped from their Halpha light signal in other galaxies.   Ok, so my interest was piqued – I had to figure out

A Bunch of Hydrogen – Galactic Spiral Structure (Part 1)

A Bunch of Hydrogen – Galactic Spiral Structure (Part 1)

My first post on this website is the first of five that provide insights into the very misunderstood topic of why galactic spirals are spirals. Here we introduce the two matter ingredients that are necessary to create the structure – hydrogen and a central gravitational structure (a black hole will do). I also introduce the concept of self-gravity via Newton’s Shell Theory – and why a “collapsing molecular cloud” neither explains a galaxy, nor even star formation. Also introduced, is the concept of thermodynamics and how two forms of the same material (hydrogen) makes galaxies even more interesting,