There’s an unusual object near the Milky Way’s heart that astronomers call “The Brick.” It’s a massive cloud of gas called an infrared dark cloud (IDC). The Brick is dense and turbulent like others of its type, but for some reason, it shows few signs of star formation. Why? The Milky Way’s Central Molecular Zone … Continue reading 'JWST Gazes into the Dark Molecular Clouds at the Heart of the Milky Way'
The Brick is one of the most-studied IDCs in the Milky Way. It shows much less star formation than other clouds of similar masses. That constitutes a mystery, and astronomers gravitate towards mysteries.
,” and it’s available on the pre-press site arxiv.org. The lead author is Adam Ginsburg, an Assistant Professor of Astronomy at the University of Florida. Astronomers have put in a lot of effort to understand the presence, distribution, and behaviour of gas in the Milky Way, including the CMZ. But they haven’t investigated frozen gases like CO very thoroughly. That’s because it takes powerful infrared capabilities to study it.In this image of the Brick, the researchers used the JWST’s filters to remove all of the stars. The resulting image shows the dark cloud in the center, with blue representing carbon monoxide.
Stars like to form when gas is cool, so finding this much CO should indicate a high rate of star formation. But the gas inside the brick is warmer than other clouds in spite of the presence of all that ice. If there’s more CO in the Brick and in the galactic center than thought, that has different implications for star formation models and could affect the Brick’s low star formation rate.
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