As part of the VISIONS survey program, astronomers have surveyed five nearby star-forming molecular cloud complexes associated with the constellations of Chamaeleon, Corona Australis, Lupus, Ophiuchus, and Orion, with ESO’s Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy (VISTA) at Paranal Observatory.
Stars form when clouds of gas and dust collapse under their own gravity, but the details of how this happens are not fully understood.
How many stars are born out of a cloud? How massive are they? How many stars will also have planets?
To answer these questions, University of Vienna astronomer Stefan Meingast and colleagues surveyed five nearby star-forming regions with the VISTA Infrared Camera (VIRCAM) on the VISTA telescope.
These regions are located less than 1,500 light-years away in the constellations of Orion, Ophiuchus, Chamaeleon, Corona Australis and Lupus.
“In the VISIONS images, we can detect even the faintest sources of light, like stars far less massive than the Sun, revealing objects that no one has ever seen before,” Dr. Meingast said.
“This will allow us to understand the processes that transform gas and dust into stars.”
Using the VIRCAM instrument, the astronomers captured light coming from deep inside the clouds of dust.
“The dust obscures these young stars from our view, making them virtually invisible to our eyes,” said University of Vienna Ph.D. student Alena Rottensteiner.
“Only at infrared wavelengths can we look deep into these clouds, studying the stars in the making.”
Over a period of five years, the researchers obtained more than one million images of the five star-forming regions.
Since the same areas were observed repeatedly, the VISIONS data will also allow astronomers to study how young stars move.
“With VISIONS we monitor these baby stars over several years, allowing us to measure their motion and learn how they leave their parent clouds,” said Dr. João Alves, an astronomer at the University of…
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