Stellar Nurseries
👶
That is the name for regions of space filled with gas and dust and bright young stars!
Active star formation is truly a thing of beauty 😍 just look at this. What can we you in this picture?
Look closer....
📸: prawn nebula/@ESO
These dark regions are dense "molecular clouds", that are roughly 1000 times colder than the bright areas!
They eventually fall in on themselves under their own weight, or get squished by the powerful winds of new stars. When they get dense enough...
Without them, no Calcium for your bones, no Oxygen for your lungs, no Carbon for your organic chemistry...
It would be a sad cosmos filled with hydrogen and helium.
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You can see beautiful examples of stellar nurseries in Cathrin's amazing paintings 😍😍😍