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Bondwriter

Bondwriter 22

Posted

Does this mean that the red "cloud" is going to congregate to form a star?

JamesSavik

JamesSavik 24,837

Posted

Does this mean that the red "cloud" is going to congregate to form a star?

 

 

No. Cygnus is a huge cloud- this is merely the northern half- it is several hundred light years across.

 

It corresponds to the Milkey Way galaxy's Cygnus Arm- one of our galaxy's bright spiral arms.

 

Two other well known clouds are the Orion and Scorpius-Taurian Arms.

 

The red glowing parts of the cloud are energized by starlight from bright massive and energetic stars.

 

The darker parts of the cloud are collapsing to form stars, multiple stars and/or planetary systems.

 

As it happens, those bright/massive stars pump out a lot of radiation pressure which either energizes the gas or pushes it towards gravitational collapse.

 

This particular region could be forming many thousands of stars.

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