Herschel Space Telescope has recently been presenting spectacular views of the fog of gas that lies near the Milky Way field. The image was taken revealed the existence of intense activity and unexpected. Dark areas and cold with the points where the stars are born like cosmic pearls.

On 3 September, Herschel directed to a reservoir of cold gas in the fog the Southern Cross constellation (Southern Cross) in the near field of the galaxy. As the telescope scans the sky, the device Spectral and photometric imaging receiver, Spire, and the Photoconductor Array Camera and Spectrometer, PACS took some images of the area located at about 60 ° from the center of the galaxy, thousands of light years from Earth.

Five infrared wavelengths has been encoded in the form of colors to allow scientists to distinguish material that is very cold (red) with the surrounding environment is a little warmer (blue).

This image reveals the structure of the material in our galaxy, in a form that had never seen before. Even before there is a more detailed analysis, scientists have been collecting information on the quantity of material, mass, temperature, composition, and whether these structures are collapsing to form new stars.

Image of the instrument Spire (above) and PACS (below) taken by Herschel telescope (Image: ESA)

That the dark areas and this kind of cold was full of activity is unexpected. But the images also revealed a surprising upheaval: the interstellar material to condense into a memalar filament (continuous) and connected the glow of the light emitted by stars, newly born at different levels of development. Our galaxy is a galaxy that is constantly giving birth stars of new generation.

The stars formed from digin environment and solid, and in these images, it's easy to find a place where there is a central filament forming stars, a very difficult job to do on the image with a single wavelength.

Usually, in a crowded area like this, located in our galaxy and contains many molecular mist as far as the eye could see, the astronomers will find it difficult to see in more detail. Herschel infrared instrument, however sophisticated the job easier, look into the murky fog in visible light, and saw the glow from the dust itself. This observation is not possible to do with equipment based on the ground.

The result is a view of the structure of an amazing network of filaments, and features a chain of events indicates that star formation is almost simultaneous, bright as the set of pearls, deep in the depths of our galaxy. (www.esa.int)