Astronomy Tony Wong led an international team of astronomers to create a detailed map of star-forming regions of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a neighboring galaxy.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. An international team of astronomers has mapped in detail the star-birthing regions of the nearest star-forming galaxy to our own, a step toward understanding the conditions surrounding star creation. Led by University of Illinois astronomy professor Tony Wong, the researchers published their findings in the December issue of the Astrophysical Journal Supplement Series. The Large Magellanic Cloud (LMC) is a popular galaxy among astronomers both for its nearness to our Milky Way and for the spectacular view it provides, a big-picture vista impossible to capture of our own galaxy. "If you imagine a galaxy being a disc, the LMC is tilted almost face-on so we can look down on it, which gives us a very clear view of what's going on inside," Wong said. Although astronomers have a working theory of how individual stars form, they know very little about what triggers the process or the environmental conditions that are optimal for star birth. Wong's team focused on areas called molecular clouds, which are dense patches of gas - primarily molecular hydrogen - where stars are born.
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