Previously unseen star formation in Milky Way detected in new study

Bengaluru: An international team of astronomers has carried out an extensive new survey of the Milky Way, revealing previously unseen signatures with unprecedented sensitivity and details that hint at how stars form and die, complex processes that have fascinated researchers for centuries.

The results were published in a series of papers in ‘Astronomy & Astrophysics’ by the team, which includes scientists from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Institute of Space Science and Technology (IIST).

The data for the survey, which spanned a large part of the Milky Way, was gathered using two powerful radio telescopes: the Karl G Jansky Very Large Array (VLA) at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA, and theEffelsberg100-m radio telescope operated by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy Germany, as part of the GLOSTAR (Global View on Star formation in the Milky Way) project.