Xinhua News Agency Beijing, December 10 (Reporter Zhang Quan) The vast interstellar space between the hundreds of billions of stars in the Milky Way is not nothing, but is full of thin interstellar medium . Chinese scientists recently used the "Chinese Sky Eye" FAST to reveal unprecedented high-definition details of the interstellar medium in the Milky Way, which is of great significance to studying the interstellar ecological cycle in the Milky Way.
This research was completed by a scientific research team led by Han Jinlin, a researcher at the National Observatory of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. The series of papers were published as a special topic in the academic journal "Chinese Science: Physics, Mechanics, Astronomy" on the 10th.
"The interstellar medium of the Milky Way hides the mystery of star life and death, and has always been the goal of astronomers to explore." Han Jinlin introduced that the Milky Way is filled with hydrogen atoms gas. The dense hydrogen atoms gather and cool, forming a cloud of hydrogen molecules, and a new generation of stars are nurtured in the core of high-density clouds; stars continue to evolve, and some of them eventually explode into supernova , producing supernova relics and pulsars; explosion shock waves can compress the gas in interstellar space and accelerate electrons to close to the speed of light. These high-speed electrons move in the interstellar magnetic field and radiate weak radio waves.
Han Jinlin's team synchronized the spectral line data of interstellar medium while searching for pulsars in the Milky Way, revealing the exquisite structure of neutral hydrogen gas in the Milky Way and the diffuse characteristics of ionized gas. They also detected small clouds that were 60,000 light years away from the center of the Milky Way and could not be seen clearly by other telescopes, providing high-quality observation data sets for cutting-edge projects such as gas dynamics research in the Milky Way and the structure of spiral arm .
In addition, the team also measured the Faraday effect of a large number of dark and weak pulsars, showing the magnetic field characteristics in a large range of far-reaching areas in the Milky Way, and newly identified two remains of supernova explosions in .
The editor-in-chief of this special topic, Academician Jing Yipeng of Shanghai Jiaotong University, said, "High sensitivity FAST observations reveal unprecedented details in the Milky Way. The neutral hydrogen and ionized hydrogen database published by the research team can be used to explore many characteristics of the Milky Way interstellar gas, providing valuable data resources for astronomers around the world."
According to reports, Han Jinlin's team is still working hard to patrol the Galaxy region visible to FAST, with the goal of completing the 2900 square degree area of the Milky Way.
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