Astronomers Have Discovered a Gigantic Sphere-Shaped Cavity in Space
Astronomers have discovered a giant, spherical cavity within the Milky Way galaxy; its location is depicted on the right. A zoomed in view of the cavity (left) shows the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds in blue and red, respectively. Though they appear to sit within the cavity and touch, new 3D images of the clouds show they border the cavity and are quite a distance apart. This image was produced in glue using the WorldWide Telescope. Credit: Alyssa Goodman/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Gigantic cavity in space sheds new light on how stars form.
Astronomers analyzing 3D maps of the shapes and sizes of nearby molecular clouds have discovered a gigantic cavity in space.
The sphere-shaped void, described today in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, spans about 150 parsecs — nearly 500 light years — and is located on the sky among the constellations Perseus and Taurus. The research team, which is based at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian, believes the cavity was formed by ancient supernovae that went off some 10 million years ago.
The mysterious cavity is surrounded by the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds — regions in space where stars form.
“Hundreds of stars are forming or exist already at the surface of this giant bubble,” says Shmuel Bialy, a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Theory and Computation (ITC) at the Center for Astrophysics (
Astronomers analyzing 3D maps of interstellar dust have discovered a huge, spherical-shaped cavity in space. The discovery shows that supernovae led to the creation of the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds. Credit: Jasen Chambers/Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian
Mapping Stellar Nurseries
The 3D map of the bubble and surrounding clouds were created using new data from Gaia, a space-based observatory launched by the European Space Agency (ESA).
Descriptions of exactly how 3D maps of the Perseus and Taurus molecular clouds and other nearby clouds were analyzed appear in a separate study published today in the Astrophysical…
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