<div style="margin: 12px 0px; font-family: arial; color: #333333; background: #ffffff; border: solid 4px #e5e5e5; width: 100%; clear: left;"><div class="CM_CTB_Content_Wrap" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px;background-color: #ffffff;"><div style="border-bottom: solid 1px #dcdcdc; white-space: nowrap; margin-bottom: 8px; background-color: #eeeeee ;background-image: url(http://clipmarks.com/images/source-bg.gif); background-repeat: repeat-x; height: 24px; line-height: 24px; vertical-align: middle; padding-bottom: 4px; color: #666666; font-size: 10px;" ><a href="http://clipmarks.com/clip-to-blog/" title="see clips that are hot right now"><img src="http://content.clipmarks.com/blog_embed/aac64188-a15c-4ab1-b97d-71c786552fbf/BD8301C3-69AE-4522-AD4C-21687A0BAC6B/" alt="" width="19" height="19" border="0" style="vertical-align: middle; margin: 0px 4px; display: inline; border: none; float:none;" /></a>clipped from <a title="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/" href="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/" style="font-size: 11px;">www.badastronomy.com</a></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/">M81 and M82 are bright nearby galaxies</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/">These two galaxies interacted a couple of hundred million years ago, and the gravitational interaction drew out long tendrils of gas </blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/"><A target="_blank" href="http://hubblesite.org/newscenter/archive/releases/2008/02">Astronomers examined this bridge of material using Hubble</A>, and found clusters of stars in it. That was totally unexpected; the gas was thought to be too thin to form stars! Amazingly, many of the stars are blue, indicating they are young</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/"><div align="center"><img src="http://content7.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.badastronomy.com/img/988E5269-F675-4589-A401-F58AD7E06458" alt="Picture of the galaxies M81 and M82 from GalEx" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/">This means that the gas is still forming stars, even 200 million years after the collision!</blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/"><P>In the image below, almost all the stars you see are young blue stars formed in the aftermath of that titanic collision. The reddish stars are stars in our galaxy, and the bigger objects are distant background galaxies.</P></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/"><div align="center"><img src="http://content8.clipmarks.com/blog_cache/www.badastronomy.com/img/C49796B3-159F-4F91-84FC-8C01E9EC9CBE" alt="Hubble picture of the M81 - M82 loop of stars" /></div></blockquote><div style="height: 2px; font-size: 2px; background: #dcdcdc; border-bottom: solid 1px #f5f5f5; margin: 2px 4px;"></div><blockquote style="text-align: left; padding: 0px 8px; margin: 4px 0px 8px 0px; background: transparent; border: none;" cite="http://www.badastronomy.com/bablog/2008/01/08/aas-6-lonely-stars-between-galaxies/">Most likely, the stars formed when turbulence in the tendril caused local regions of denser gas, which could collapse to form stars. Before these observations, it wasn’t really thought it was possible to form stars in the regions between galaxies, so this is an interesting new find</blockquote></div><div style="margin: 0px 6px 6px 4px;"><table style="font-size: 11px;border-spacing: 0px;padding: 0px;" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;">&nbsp;</td><td align="right" style="background:transparent;border-width:0px;padding:0px;width:107px" width="107"><a href="http://clipmarks.com/share/BD8301C3-69AE-4522-AD4C-21687A0BAC6B/blog/" title="blog or email this clip"><img src="http://content9.clipmarks.com/images/c2b-foot.png" border="0" alt="blog it" width="107" height="17" style="border-width:0px;padding:0px;margin:0px;" /></a></td></tr></table></div></div>

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