A molecular cloud, sometimes called a stellar nursery (if
is occurring within), is a type of
interstellar cloud
An interstellar cloud is generally an accumulation of gas, plasma, and dust in our and other galaxies. Put differently, an interstellar cloud is a denser-than-average region of the interstellar medium, the matter and radiation that exists in t ...
, the density and size of which permit
absorption nebula
A dark nebula or absorption nebula is a type of interstellar cloud, particularly molecular clouds, that is so dense that it obscures the visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it, such as background stars and emission or reflection nebu ...
e, the formation of molecules (most commonly
molecular hydrogen
Hydrogen is the chemical element with the symbol H and atomic number 1. Hydrogen is the lightest element. At standard conditions hydrogen is a gas of diatomic molecules having the formula . It is colorless, odorless, tasteless, non-toxic, ...
, H
2), and the formation of
H II region
An H II region or HII region is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized. It is typically in a molecular cloud of partially ionized gas in which star formation has recently taken place, with a size ranging from one to hundreds ...
s. This is in contrast to other areas of the
interstellar medium
In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter and radiation that exist in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as dust and cosmic rays. It fills interstella ...
that contain predominantly
ionized gas
Plasma ()[πλάσμα](_blank)
, Henry George Liddell, R ...
.
Molecular hydrogen is difficult to detect by infrared and radio observations, so the molecule most often used to determine the presence of H
2 is
carbon monoxide
Carbon monoxide (chemical formula CO) is a colorless, poisonous, odorless, tasteless, flammable gas that is slightly less dense than air. Carbon monoxide consists of one carbon atom and one oxygen atom connected by a triple bond. It is the simple ...
(CO). The ratio between CO
luminosity
Luminosity is an absolute measure of radiated electromagnetic power (light), the radiant power emitted by a light-emitting object over time. In astronomy, luminosity is the total amount of electromagnetic energy emitted per unit of time by a st ...
and H
2 mass
Mass is an intrinsic property of a body. It was traditionally believed to be related to the quantity of matter in a physical body, until the discovery of the atom and particle physics. It was found that different atoms and different elementar ...
is thought to be constant, although there are reasons to doubt this assumption in observations of some other
galaxies
A galaxy is a system of stars, stellar remnants, interstellar gas, dust, dark matter, bound together by gravity. The word is derived from the Greek ' (), literally 'milky', a reference to the Milky Way galaxy that contains the Solar System. ...
.
Within molecular clouds are regions with higher density, where much dust and many gas cores reside, called clumps. These clumps are the beginning of star formation if gravitational forces are sufficient to cause the dust and gas to collapse.
History
The form of molecular clouds by interstellar dust and hydrogen gas traces its links to the formation of the
Solar System
The Solar SystemCapitalization of the name varies. The International Astronomical Union, the authoritative body regarding astronomical nomenclature, specifies capitalizing the names of all individual astronomical objects but uses mixed "Solar S ...
, approximately 4.6 billion years ago.
Occurrence
Within the
Milky Way
The Milky Way is the galaxy that includes our Solar System, with the name describing the galaxy's appearance from Earth: a hazy band of light seen in the night sky formed from stars that cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye ...
, molecular gas clouds account for less than one percent of the volume of the
interstellar medium
In astronomy, the interstellar medium is the matter and radiation that exist in the space between the star systems in a galaxy. This matter includes gas in ionic, atomic, and molecular form, as well as dust and cosmic rays. It fills interstella ...
(ISM), yet it is also the densest part of the medium, comprising roughly half of the total gas mass interior to the
Sun
The Sun is the star at the center of the Solar System. It is a nearly perfect ball of hot plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core. The Sun radiates this energy mainly as light, ultraviolet, and infrared radi ...
's galactic orbit. The bulk of the molecular gas is contained in a ring between from the center of the Milky Way (the Sun is about 8.5 kiloparsecs from the center).
Large scale CO maps of the galaxy show that the position of this gas correlates with the spiral arms of the galaxy. That molecular gas occurs predominantly in the spiral arms suggests that molecular clouds must form and dissociate on a timescale shorter than 10 million years—the time it takes for material to pass through the arm region.
![Violent birth announcement from an infant star](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/79/Violent_birth_announcement_from_an_infant_star.jpg)
Vertically to the plane of the galaxy, the molecular gas inhabits the narrow midplane of the galactic disc with a characteristic
scale height
In atmospheric, earth, and planetary sciences, a scale height, usually denoted by the capital letter ''H'', is a distance (vertical or radial) over which a physical quantity decreases by a factor of e (the base of natural logarithms, approximate ...
, ''Z'', of approximately 50 to 75 parsecs, much thinner than the warm
atom
Every atom is composed of a nucleus and one or more electrons bound to the nucleus. The nucleus is made of one or more protons and a number of neutrons. Only the most common variety of hydrogen has no neutrons.
Every solid, liquid, gas, and ...
ic (''Z ''from 130 to 400 parsecs) and warm
ion
An ion () is an atom or molecule with a net electrical charge.
The charge of an electron is considered to be negative by convention and this charge is equal and opposite to the charge of a proton, which is considered to be positive by conve ...
ized (''Z ''around 1000 parsecs) gaseous
components of the ISM. The exception to the ionized-gas distribution are
H II region
An H II region or HII region is a region of interstellar atomic hydrogen that is ionized. It is typically in a molecular cloud of partially ionized gas in which star formation has recently taken place, with a size ranging from one to hundreds ...
s, which are bubbles of hot ionized gas created in molecular clouds by the intense radiation given off by
young massive stars and as such they have approximately the same vertical distribution as the molecular gas.
This distribution of molecular gas is averaged out over large distances; however, the small scale distribution of the gas is highly irregular with most of it concentrated in discrete clouds and cloud complexes.
Types of molecular cloud
Giant molecular clouds
A vast assemblage of molecular gas that has more than 10 thousand times the mass of the Sun
[See, e.g., ] is called a giant molecular cloud (GMC). GMCs are around 15 to 600 light-years (5 to 200 parsecs) in diameter, with typical masses of 10 thousand to 10 million solar masses.
Whereas the average density in the solar vicinity is one particle per cubic centimetre, the average density of a GMC is a hundred to a thousand times as great. Although the Sun is much denser than a GMC, the volume of a GMC is so great that it contains much more mass than the Sun. The substructure of a GMC is a complex pattern of filaments, sheets, bubbles, and irregular clumps.
Filaments are truly ubiquitous in the molecular cloud. Dense molecular filaments will fragment into gravitationally bound cores, most of which will evolve into stars. Continuous accretion of gas, geometrical bending, and magnetic fields may control the detailed fragmentation manner of the filaments. In supercritical filaments observations have revealed quasi-periodic chains of dense cores with spacing of 0.15 parsec comparable to the filament inner width.
The densest parts of the filaments and clumps are called "molecular cores", while the densest molecular cores are called "dense molecular cores" and have densities in excess of 10
4 to 10
6 particles per cubic centimetre. Observationally, typical molecular cores are traced with CO and dense molecular cores are traced with
ammonia
Ammonia is an inorganic compound of nitrogen and hydrogen with the formula . A stable binary hydride, and the simplest pnictogen hydride, ammonia is a colourless gas with a distinct pungent smell. Biologically, it is a common nitrogenous was ...
. The concentration of
dust
Dust is made of fine particles of solid matter. On Earth, it generally consists of particles in the atmosphere that come from various sources such as soil lifted by wind (an aeolian process), volcanic eruptions, and pollution. Dust in homes ...
within molecular cores is normally sufficient to block light from background stars so that they appear in silhouette as
dark nebulae
A dark nebula or absorption nebula is a type of interstellar cloud, particularly molecular clouds, that is so dense that it obscures the visible wavelengths of light from objects behind it, such as background stars and emission or reflection nebu ...
.
GMCs are so large that "local" ones can cover a significant fraction of a constellation; thus they are often referred to by the name of that constellation, e.g. the
Orion molecular cloud (OMC) or the
Taurus molecular cloud (TMC). These local GMCs are arrayed in a ring in the neighborhood of the Sun coinciding with the
Gould Belt
The Gould Belt is a local, partial ring of stars in the Milky Way, about 3,000 light-years long, tilted away from the galactic plane by about 16–20 degrees. It contains many O- and B-type stars, amounting to the nearest star-forming regi ...
. The most massive collection of molecular clouds in the galaxy forms an asymmetrical ring about the galactic center at a radius of 120 parsecs; the largest component of this ring is the
Sagittarius B2
Sagittarius B2 (Sgr B2) is a giant molecular cloud of gas and dust that is located about from the center of the Milky Way. This complex is the largest molecular cloud in the vicinity of the core and one of the largest in the galaxy, spanning a r ...
complex. The Sagittarius region is chemically rich and is often used as an exemplar by astronomers searching for new molecules in interstellar space.
Small molecular clouds
Isolated gravitationally-bound small molecular clouds with masses less than a few hundred times that of the Sun are called
Bok globule
In astronomy, Bok globules are isolated and relatively small dark nebulae, containing dense cosmic dust and gas from which star formation may take place. Bok globules are found within H II regions, and typically have a mass of about 2 to 50 solar ...
s. The densest parts of small molecular clouds are equivalent to the molecular cores found in GMCs and are often included in the same studies.
High-latitude diffuse molecular clouds
In 1984
IRAS
The Infrared Astronomical Satellite (Dutch: ''Infrarood Astronomische Satelliet'') (IRAS) was the first space telescope to perform a survey of the entire night sky at infrared wavelengths. Launched on 25 January 1983, its mission lasted ten mo ...
identified a new type of diffuse molecular cloud. These were diffuse filamentary clouds that are visible at high
galactic latitudes. These clouds have a typical density of 30 particles per cubic centimetre.
Processes
Star formation
The formation of
star
A star is an astronomical object comprising a luminous spheroid of plasma (physics), plasma held together by its gravity. The List of nearest stars and brown dwarfs, nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked ...
s occurs exclusively within molecular clouds. This is a natural consequence of their low temperatures and high densities, because the gravitational force acting to collapse the cloud must exceed the internal pressures that are acting "outward" to prevent a collapse. There is observed evidence that the large, star-forming clouds are confined to a large degree by their own gravity (like stars, planets, and galaxies) rather than by external pressure. The evidence comes from the fact that the "turbulent" velocities inferred from CO linewidth scale in the same manner as the orbital velocity (a
virial relation).
Physics
![Serpens_south](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/67/Serpens_south.jpg)
The physics of molecular clouds is poorly understood and much debated. Their internal motions are governed by
turbulence
In fluid dynamics, turbulence or turbulent flow is fluid motion characterized by chaotic changes in pressure and flow velocity. It is in contrast to a laminar flow, which occurs when a fluid flows in parallel layers, with no disruption between ...
in a cold,
magnetized
Magnetism is the class of physical attributes that are mediated by a magnetic field, which refers to the capacity to induce attractive and repulsive phenomena in other entities. Electric currents and the magnetic moments of elementary particles ...
gas, for which the turbulent motions are highly
supersonic
Supersonic speed is the speed of an object that exceeds the speed of sound ( Mach 1). For objects traveling in dry air of a temperature of 20 °C (68 °F) at sea level, this speed is approximately . Speeds greater than five times ...
but comparable to the speeds of magnetic disturbances. This state is thought to lose energy rapidly, requiring either an overall collapse or a steady reinjection of energy. At the same time, the clouds are known to be disrupted by some process—most likely the effects of massive stars—before a significant fraction of their mass has become stars.
Molecular clouds, and especially GMCs, are often the home of
astronomical masers.
List of molecular cloud complexes
![Milkyway360-hemispheres-32k m14-g1 Clouds](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f5/Milkyway360-hemispheres-32k_m14-g1_Clouds.jpg)
*
Great Rift
**
Serpens-Aquila Rift
*
Rho Ophiuchi cloud complex
*
Corona Australis molecular cloud
Corona Australis is a constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere. Its Latin name means "southern crown", and it is the southern counterpart of Corona Borealis, the northern crown. It is one of the 48 constellations listed by the 2nd-centu ...
*
Musca–Chamaeleonis molecular cloud
*
Vela Molecular Ridge
Vela Molecular Ridge is a molecular cloud complex in the constellations Vela (constellation), Vela and Puppis. Radio 12CO observations of the region showed the ridge to be composed of several clouds, each with masses 100,000–1,000,000 Mass of th ...
*
Orion molecular cloud complex
The Orion molecular cloud complex (or, simply, the Orion complex) is a star-forming region with stellar ages ranging up to 12 Myr. Two giant molecular clouds are a part of it, Orion A and Orion B. The stars currently forming within the complex a ...
*
Taurus molecular cloud
*
Perseus molecular cloud
The Perseus molecular cloud (Per MCld) is a nearby (~1000 ly) giant molecular cloud in the constellation of Perseus and contains over 10,000 solar masses of gas and dust covering an area of 6 by 2 degrees. Unlike the Orion molecular cloud it is a ...
See also
References
External links
*
{{Authority control
Nebulae
Cosmic dust
Concepts in astronomy