January 5, 2026

Celestial Antiquity GAL116

The object referred to as GAL316 is a dense molecular gas cloud where stars are forming, located at an approximate distance of 2.5 kiloparsecs (about 8,150 light-years) from Earth. It is not an individual star. 
Astronomers study GAL316 as part of research into understanding the efficiency of star formation in dense gas regions within the Milky Way. The distance is an average value used for scientific analysis, often grouped with other similar clouds at distances up to 3 kiloparsecs.

Creating a star is hard work, and the process is not very efficient. Current knowledge suggests that a stellar nursery must have a minimum density of gas and dust for a star to form. Only 1-2% of all the gas and dust in these clouds is utilised to ignite a star. But could even denser regions be more efficient at forming stars?

In today’s Picture of the Week, we’re looking at GAL316, one of the many stellar nurseries a team of astronomers observed to answer this question. This region is part of a survey called CAFFEINE – an astronomer’s best friend – carried out using the ArTéMiS camera at the Atacama Pathfinder Experiment (APEX), a radio-telescope in the Chajnantor plateau. Now operated by the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy, this telescope captures the faint glow of cold gas clouds, seen here as a blue glow. This glow has been overlaid on a starry background captured with ESO’s VISTA telescope.

Results from the study show that, unlike astronomers, who get more efficient with a bit of caffeine, the densest regions observed with this CAFFEINE survey seemed no more efficient at producing stars than any other stellar nursery above the minimum density.