WWW.ASTRONOMY.COM 9ANATOMY
OF A COSMIC
SWAN
Infrared light reveals
a famous object’s
piecemeal past.The Omega Nebula, also
called the Swan Nebula, is a
massive star-forming region
about 5,000 light-years away.
Hidden within its opaque,
dusty clouds are more than
100 newly formed stars as well
as clues to the region’s past,
including how the nebula itself
formed over time. Using the
Stratospheric Observatory
for Infrared Astronomy, or
SOFIA, astronomers have
peered deeper into the region
than ever before to discover
nine new massive protostars
— collapsing sections of gas
and dust that will soon ignite
into suns.
SOFIA’s observations also
show that different areas of
the nebula have different
ages. Rather than forming all
at once or sequentially from
top to bottom, the central
region of the nebula formed
first, followed by the northern
portion, while the southern
part of the nebula is youngest.
By studying the nebula
and how it is put together,
astronomers hope to learn
more about the conditions
in which the galaxy’s most
massive stars are born.
— ALISON KLESMANNEW NAME
The Large Synoptic
Survey Telescope, under
construction on Cerro
Pachón, Chile, is now
called the National
Science Foundation Vera
C. Rubin Observatory
— the first national
U.S. observatory named
for a woman.BIG SOLO
In April 2019, LIGO
spotted the second-
ever gravitational wave
signal generated by
a binary neutron star
merger. It is the first
confirmed event seen
with only one gravita-
tional wave detector,
LIGO Livingston.TWIN SUNS
On January 6,
researchers announced
that NASA’s TESS
planet-hunting
spacecraft had spotted
its first planet with
two suns. The world,
called TOI 1338 b, orbits
its binary stars every
93 to 95 days.HOT
BYTESSNAPSHOTQUA NTUM GRAVITY
EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE UNIVERSE THIS MONTH
QGNASA/SOFIA/LIM, DE BUIZER, & RADOMSKI ET AL., ESA/HERSCHEL, NASA/JPL-CALTECH. BOTTOM FROM LEFT: RUBIN OBSERVATORY/AURA/NSF; NASA’S GODDARD SPACE FLIGHT CENTER; NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION/LIGO/SONOMA STATE UNIVERSITY/A. SIMONNET