"Newly discovered Midpoint cloud offers a rare glimpse into star formation and the dynamic flow of galactic material toward the Milky Way's center"
(Image credit: collage created by NSF/AUI/NSF NRAO/P.Vosteen.)
"An international team of astronomers has discovered a massive cloud of gas and dust located in a little-known region of our Milky Way galaxy. The Giant Molecular Cloud (GMC) is about 60 parsecs—or 200 light years—long."
"“One of the big discoveries of the paper was the GMC itself. No one had any idea this cloud existed until we looked at this location in the sky and found the dense gas. Through measurements of the size, mass, and density, we confirmed this was a giant molecular cloud,” shares Natalie Butterfield, an NSF National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO) scientist and lead author of this paper.
“These dust lanes are like hidden rivers of gas and dust that are carrying material into the center of our galaxy,” explained Butterfield. “The Midpoint cloud is a place where material from the galaxy’s disk is transitioning into the more extreme environment of the galactic center and provides a unique opportunity to study the initial gas conditions before accumulating in the center of our galaxy.”"
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