beecee Posted June 8, 2018 Posted June 8, 2018 https://phys.org/news/2018-06-magnetic-fields-key-star-formation.html Magnetic fields could hold the key to star formation: Astronomers have discovered new magnetic fields in space, which could shed light on how stars are formed and uncover the mysteries behind one of the most famous celestial images. For the first time, extremely subtle magnetic fields in the Pillars of Creation – a structure made famous thanks to an iconic image taken by the Hubble Space Telescope – have been discovered and mapped. The structure consists of cosmic dust and cold, dense gas that have nurseries of stars forming at their tips. This innovative research has shown that the magnetic fields that run along the lengths of the Pillars are at a different angle to the regions surrounding the Pillars, revealing the reason behind their unusual structure. This ground-breaking discovery suggests that the Pillars have evolved due to the strength of the magnetic field and that the Pillars are held up thanks to magnetic support, suggesting that stars could be formed by the collapse of clumps of gas being slowed down by magnetic fields, and resulting in a pillar-like formation. Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-06-magnetic-fields-key-star-formation.html#jCp :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: the paper: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1805.11554.pdf First observations of the magnetic field inside the Pillars of Creation: Results from the BISTRO survey: ABSTRACT We present the first high-resolution, submillimeter-wavelength polarimetric observations of – and thus direct observations of the magnetic field morphology within – the dense gas of the Pillars of Creation in M16. These 850 µm observations, taken as part of the BISTRO (B-Fields in Star-forming Region Observations) Survey using the POL-2 polarimeter on the SCUBA-2 camera on the James Clerk Maxwell Telescope (JCMT), show that the magnetic field runs along the length of the pillars, perpendicular to, and decoupled from, the field in the surrounding photoionized cloud. Using the Chandrasekhar-Fermi method we estimate a plane-of-sky magnetic field strength of 170 − 320 µG in the Pillars, consistent with their having been formed through compression of gas with initially weak magnetization. The observed magnetic field strength and morphology suggests that the magnetic field may be slowing the pillars’ evolution into cometary globules. We thus hypothesize that the evolution and lifetime of the Pillars may be strongly influenced by the strength of the coupling of their magnetic field to that of their parent photoionized cloud – i.e. that the Pillars’ longevity results from magnetic support.
Recommended Posts