After capturing stunning video and images of young stars nebula RCW 34 exploding upon hitting the vacuum of space, the astronomers who captured it called their sighting a "champagne flow."
According to Space.com, the astronomers made their discovery with the European Southern Observatory's (ESO) Very Large Telescope (VLT) in Chile. The name "champagne flow" comes from the bubbles the stars leave behind.
In RCW 34, some stars are older than others and therefore have more hydrogen surrounding them, an observation not typical for most nebulas. When the stars reached the edge of the nebula, where there is considerably less hydrogen, they burst.
"Hydrogen is treasured by cosmic photographers because it glows brightly in the characteristic red color that distinguishes many nebulae and allows them to create beautiful images with bizarre shapes. It is also the raw material of dramatic phenomena such as champagne flow," the ESO said in a statement. "But ionized hydrogen also has an important astronomical role: it is an indicator of star-forming regions. Stars are born from collapsing gas clouds and therefore abundant in regions with copious amounts of gas, like RCW 34. This makes the nebula particularly interesting to astronomers studying stellar birth and evolution."
Based on their observations, the astronomers believe RCW 34 is the site of star formations, meaning there is a mix of stars of different ages.
"Looking behind the red color reveals that there are a lot of young stars in this region with masses only a fraction of that of the Sun. These seem to clump around older, more massive stars at the center, while only a few are distributed in the outskirts," read the statement. "This distribution has led astronomers to believe that there have been different episodes of star formation within the cloud. Three gigantic stars formed in the first event that then triggered the formation of the less massive stars in their vicinity."
