Abstract
In 1960 there was a strong conviction that new stars were born in dark clouds. These dark clouds were always near to light-emitting nebulae that were illuminated by very bright stars. The stars had so short a lifespan that they were still in the place where they were born. This conviction was endorsed in 1954 by the discovery by Walker of immature stars near to dark clouds, a discovery that has been discussed in Chap. 2. Unfortunately, very little was known about these dark clouds, other than that they were dark because they consisted of small grains of dust or grit that occluded all the light from outside. It was impossible to say how many particles of dust there were, nor was it known whether the clouds contained any gas. Radio telescopes had been used to search for the 21cm line of hydrogen atoms, but nothing was found. Nonetheless, astronomers continued to believe that the clouds should contain some gas, and if gas was present, since all the stars consisted mainly of hydrogen, this gas should also consist of hydrogen.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Dark clouds’ are unrelated to so-called ‘dark matter’. In dark clouds, all background light is blocked by small grains of sand or soot. ‘Dark matter’ (to be introduced in Chap. 8) comprises elementary particles that neither emit nor absorb light or any other electro-magnetic radiation.
- 2.
A short note about the naming of variable stars. T Tau stars were variable stars, of which the star T Tau was the prototype. It was the third star in the constellation of Taurus, of which the brightness was variable. The first variable star detected in that constellation was called R Tau; S Tau was next and T Tau the third. This weird naming practice was introduced at the start of the nineteenth century for reasons comprehensible at that time.
- 3.
Maths: if you calculate y = 1/x for an increasing value of x, you will see that y slowly but surely approaches the x axis, but never reaches it.
- 4.
C III stands for the twice-ionized carbon atom: C2+. Similarly, Si IV stands for Si3+.
- 5.
It is remarkable that there were no known observations of this supernova, even though, at the time of the explosion a large number of astronomers were using telescopes to search the skies for something unusual.
- 6.
Together with Bondi and Hoyle, in 1946 Gold had come up with the idea of ‘steady state’ cosmology. See Chap. 3.
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Habing, H.J. (2018). 1960–1974: Stars. In: The Birth of Modern Astronomy. Historical & Cultural Astronomy. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-99082-8_4
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