Free Astronomy Magazine September-October 2021

42 SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 2021 ASTRO PUBLISHING N GC 1087 is a spiral galaxy located approximately 80 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Cetus. Instrumentation and technical features of the image similar to those of NGC 4303. [ESO/ALMA(ESO/NAOJ/NRAO)/PHANGS] N GC 1300 is a spiral galaxy, with a bar of stars and gas at its centre, located ap- proximately 61 million light-years from Earth in the constellation Eridanus. Instrumenta- tion and technical fea- tures of the image similar to those of NGC 4303. [ESO/ALMA(ESO/ NAOJ/NRAO)/PHANGS] ! In addition to ALMA and MUSE, the PHANGS project also features observations from the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The various observatories were selected to allow the team to scan our galactic neighbours at different wavelengths (visible, near-infrared and radio), with each wavelength range un- veiling distinct parts of the observed galaxies. “Their combination al- lows us to probe the various stages of stellar birth — from the for- mation of the stellar nurseries to the onset of star formation itself and the final destruc- tion of the nurseries by the newly born stars — in more de- tail than is possible with individual observations,” says PHANGS team member Francesco Belfiore from INAF-Arcetri in Florence, Italy. “PHANGS is the first time we have been able to assemble such a complete view, taking images sharp enough to see the indi- vidual clouds, stars, and nebulae that signify forming stars.” The work carried out by the PHANGS project will be further honed by upcoming telescopes and instru- ments, such as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. The data obtained in this way will lay further ground- work for observations with ESO’s future Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), which will start operating later this decade and will enable an even more detailed look at the structures of stellar nurseries. “As amazing as PHANGS is, the res- olution of the maps that we produce is just sufficient to identify and sep- arate individual star-forming clouds, but not good enough to see what’s happening inside them in detail, ” pointed out Eva Schinnerer, a re- search group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany and principal investigator of the PHANGS project, under which the new observations were con- ducted. “New observational efforts by our team and others are pushing the boundary in this direction, so we have decades of exciting discoveries ahead of us.”