New models give insight into the heart of the Rosette Nebula

A hole at the heart of a stunning rose-like interstellar cloud has puzzled astronomers for decades. But new research, led by the University of Leeds, offers an explanation for the discrepancy between the size and age of the Rosetta Nebula's central cavity and that of its central stars.

The Rosette Nebula is located in the Milky Way Galaxy roughly 5,000 light-years from Earth and is known for its rose-like shape and distinctive hole at its centre. The nebula is an interstellar cloud of dust, hydrogen, helium and other ionized gases with several massive stars found in a cluster at its heart.

Stellar winds and ionising radiation from these massive stars affect the shape of the giant molecular cloud. But the size and age of the cavity observed in the centre of Rosette Nebula is too small when compared to the age of its central stars.

Source

 

Credit: Nick Wright, Keele University

Rosette Nebula image is based on data obtained as part of the INT Photometric H-Alpha Survey of the Northern Galactic Plane, prepared by Nick Wright, Keele University, on behalf of the IPHAS Collaboration.

Source / Image Courtesy

 

Credit: C. J. Wareing et al., 2018, MNRAS

-D visualization of the simulated nebula, showing the dense disc-like molecular cloud in red, the tenuous stellar wind focused away from the disc in blue and the magnetic field lines in grey. The magnetic field is of key importance in forming a disc-like, not spherical, molecular cloud.

Source / Image Courtesy

 

Credit: C. J. Wareing et al., 2018, MNRAS

Slice through the simulation of the Rosette Nebula, perpendicular to the disc of the molecular cloud. The disc of the molecular cloud (shown in red) is clearly focussing the wind from the central star (shown in blue) away from the cloud and into the surroundings of the cloud (shown in green).

Source / Image Courtesy

 

The Rosette star formation region is located about 5,000 light years from Earth. X-rays reveal hundreds of young stars clustered in the center of a new image taken by the Chandra X-ray Observatory, and additional fainter clusters on either side.

The Rosette Nebula has long been a favorite target of amateur astronomers in the constellation Monoceros, the Unicorn, and can be occasionally seen by small telescopes from earth.