Cat's Paw Nebula Bursts with Star Growth: Baby Boom in Stellar Nursery

While the Orion Nebula is certainly one of the most studied stellar nurseries in our galaxy, it's definitely not the most prolific. That title may go to the Cat's Paw Nebula, which churns out baby stars at a furious rate. Now, researchers have examined the "baby boom" that's currently occurring in this particular nebula.

The Cat's Paw Nebula is also known as NGC 6334. An emission nebula located in the constellation Scorpius, it was first discovered by the famed astronomer John Herschel in 1837. It contains about 200,000 suns' worth of material that is currently coalescing to form new stars, some with up to 30 to 40 times as much mass as our sun. In fact, the region houses tens of thousands of recently formed stars, more than 2,000 of which are extremely young and still trapped inside the dusty cocoons from which they were formed.

"NGC 6334 is forming stars at a more rapid pace than Orion-so rapidly that it appears to be undergoing what might be called a burst of star formation," said Sarah Willis, lead author of the study, in a news release. "It might resemble a 'mini-starburst,' similar to a scaled-down version of the spectacular bursts sometimes seen in other galaxies."

In fact, this "mini-starburst" is what has researchers so interested in the nebula. Starbursts light up the galaxies in the early universe, making them bright enough to study. Yet the processes that produce these distant bursts are puzzling and even harder to study in detail because the objects appear so small and faint. This makes the Cat's Paw Nebula a perfect target to study while it's still undergoing this process-not only is it nearby, it's also still in the midst of this star formation.

Currently, the researchers are unsure exactly what caused this rapid burst of star formation. They do have some theories, though. It's possible that either waves from a nearby supernova explosion or molecular cloud collisions when galaxies smash together triggered it.

In the future, it's very likely that the nebula will resemble multiple Pleiades star clusters, each filled with up to several thousand stars. However, it won't look nearly as impressive as the Pleiades to earthbound telescopes since it's more than ten times further away. Even so, this latest burst of star formation could lead to further insight into how early stars formed in our universe.

The findings were presented at a press conference at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society.