Maddalena’s Cloud is a giant molecular cloud on the Canis Major–Monoceros border, notable for holding a great mass of gas while forming almost no stars.
At a glance
| type | nebula |
|---|---|
| distance from the Sun | 6,880 light-years (2.11 kpc) |
| its light left it | 6,880 years ago |
| size in the piece | about 49 light-years acrossmodel |
Read off the piece’s own catalogue, the same values it draws with. Model marks a property of the piece’s galaxy model rather than a measurement.
About Maddalena's Cloud
Ronald Maddalena and Patrick Thaddeus found the cloud in a radio survey of carbon monoxide, the molecule used to trace cold hydrogen. Its mass ranks it among the giant molecular clouds, the class that produces the Orion Nebula and other great star-forming regions, yet it lies in the outer Milky Way with no bright nebula marking it.
What makes it notable is how little it has done. Searches find very few young stars and no massive ones, and its gas is warmer and more turbulent than in typical star-forming clouds. It is studied as an example of a cloud at an early stage, or one held up against collapse, and so as a test of what triggers star formation at all.
What you see in the piece
The piece draws it as dark dust, so it appears only as a dimming of the stars behind it, with no glow of its own.
Measured or modelled
Whether it is a young cloud yet to start forming stars, or one kept from collapsing by turbulence or magnetic fields, is not settled.
Questions
Why is Maddalena’s Cloud unusual?
It has the mass of a giant molecular cloud but forms almost no stars, unlike the clouds that make regions like the Orion Nebula.
How far away is Maddalena’s Cloud?
Maddalena’s Cloud is 6,880 light-years (2.11 kpc) from the Sun.