Smith cloud
The Smith Cloud (after the astronomer Gail Bieger , née Smith, who she discovered in 1963 as an astronomy student at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands) is a high-speed interstellar cloud made of hydrogen gas with a mass of around one million solar masses .
The cloud is 11,000 light years long, 2,300 light years wide, and approximately 8,000 light years from the disk of the Milky Way . It extends over an angle of about 10 to 12 degrees in the sky, which is about as wide as the constellation Orion or 20 times the diameter of the full moon. However, due to its low brightness, it is not visible to the naked eye.
In January 2008 it was announced that the cloud was moving at a speed of 150 miles per second towards the disk of the Milky Way and that it is expected to collide with the Milky Way in 20 to 40 million years. This will take place at a 45 ° angle to a point in the Perseus arm , about a quarter of the way around the Milky Way from Earth, and result in the formation of many new stars ( star burst ).
Web links
- Giant gas cloud is racing towards the Milky Way: a collision in 30 million years will trigger new star formation , scinexx.de
- Massive Gas Cloud Speeding Toward Collision With Milky Way , Science Daily
- Huge gas cloud wants to hit Milky Way , BBC
- UWW
swell
- ↑ AJ Heroux: Smith's Cloud (HVC) in 21 cm HI emission . In: American Astronomical Society (Ed.): Bulletin of the American Astronomical Society . 38, December 2006, p. 1149. bibcode : 2006AAS ... 20917213H . "We have used the Green Bank Telescope (GBT) of the NRAO to measure the 21 cm HI emission from a specific high velocity cloud known as" Smith's Cloud ""
- ^ Giant gas cloud to crash into our galaxy , NewScientist, January 11, 2008