Cat's Paw Nebula, also known as NGC 6334
Stars form when gravity pulls together material within giant clouds of gas and dust. But gravity isn't the only force at work. Both turbulence and magnetic fields battle gravity, either by stirring things up or by channeling and restricting gas flows, respectively. New research focusing on magnetic fields shows that they influence star formation on a variety of scales, from hundreds of light-years down to a fraction of a light-year. The new study, which the journal Nature is publishing online on March 30th, probed the Cat's Paw Nebula, also known as NGC 6334. This nebula contains about 200,000 suns' worth of material that is coalescing to form new stars, some with up to 30 to 40 times as much mass as our sun. It is located 5,500 light-years from Earth in the constellation Scorpius.
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