PDS logoPlanetary Data System
PDS Information
Find a Node - Use these links to navigate to any of the 8 publicly accessible PDS Nodes.

This bar indicates that you are within the PDS enterprise which includes 6 science discipline nodes and 2 support nodes which are overseen by the Project Management Office at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Each node is led by an expert in the subject discipline, supported by an advisory group of other practitioners of that discipline, and subject to selection and approval under a regular NASA Research Announcement.
Click here to return to the Photojournal Home Page Click here to view a list of Photojournal Image Galleries Photojournal_inner_header
Latest Images  |  Spacecraft & Technology  |  Animations  |  Space Images App  |  Feedback  |  Photojournal Search  

PIA19340: Herschel's View of G49 Filament
 Mission:  Herschel Space Observatory
 Instrument:  PACS
SPIRE
 Product Size:  1323 x 1046 pixels (w x h)
 Produced By:  IPAC-Caltech
 Full-Res TIFF:  PIA19340.tif (4.153 MB)
 Full-Res JPEG:  PIA19340.jpg (95.89 kB)

Click on the image above to download a moderately sized image in JPEG format (possibly reduced in size from original)

Original Caption Released with Image:

New images of huge filamentary structures of gas and dust from the Herschel space observatory reveal how matter is distributed across our Milky Way galaxy. Long and flimsy threads emerge from a twisted mix of material, taking on complex shapes.

This image shows a filament called G49, which contains 80,000 suns' worth of mass. This huge but slender structure of gas and dust extends about 280 light-years in length, while its diameter is only about 5 light-years across.

In this image, longer-wavelength light has been assigned visible colors. Light with wavelengths of 70 microns is blue; 160-micron light is green; and 350-micron light is red. Cooler gas and dust are seen in red and yellow, with temperatures as low as minus 421 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 252 degrees Celsius).

In the densest and coolest clumps, the seeds of new generations of stars are taking shape. A brighter clump of matter is visible at the left tip of the wispy thread.

This filament is about 18,000 light-years away. The image is oriented with northeast toward the left of the image and southwest toward the right.

Herschel is a European Space Agency mission, with science instruments provided by consortia of European institutes and with important participation by NASA. While the observatory stopped making science observations in April 2013, after running out of liquid coolant as expected, scientists continue to analyze its data. NASA's Herschel Project Office is based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. JPL contributed mission-enabling technology for two of Herschel's three science instruments. The NASA Herschel Science Center, part of the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, supports the U.S. astronomical community. Caltech manages JPL for NASA.

More information is online at http://www.herschel.caltech.edu, http://www.nasa.gov/herschel and http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Herschel.

Image Credit:
ESA/Herschel/PACS/SPIRE/Ke Wang et al. 2015

Image Addition Date:
2015-05-28