Citizen scientist project finds thousands of 鈥榮tar bubbles鈥�
Remember when you were a kid and blowing bubbles was such great fun? Well, stars kind of do that too. The 鈥渂ubbles鈥� are partial or complete rings of dust and gas that occur around young stars in active star-forming regions, known as stellar nurseries. So far, over 5,000 bubbles have been found, but there are many more out there awaiting discovery. Now there is a project that you can take part in yourself, to help find more of these intriguing objects.
stars where it is thought that the intense light being emitted causes a shock wave, blowing out a space, or bubble, in the surrounding gas and dust.
Eli Bressert, of the European Southern Observatory and Milky Way Project team member, stated that our galaxy 鈥漣s basically like champagne, there are so many bubbles.鈥� He adds, 鈥漌e thought we were going to be able to answer a lot of questions, but it鈥檚 going to be bringing us way more questions than answers right now. This is really starting something new in astronomy that we haven鈥檛 been able to do.鈥�
There are currently about 35,000 volunteers in the project; if you would like to take part, you can go to The Milky Way Project for more information.
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