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interstellar medium
(redirected from Interstellar gas)

   Also found in: Wikipedia 0.04 sec.

interstellar medium

Content of the region between the stars, including vast, diffuse clouds of gases and minute solid particles. Such tenuous matter in the Milky Way Galaxy accounts for about 5% of its total mass. By no means a complete vacuum, the interstellar medium contains mainly hydrogen gas, with a smaller amount of helium and sizable quantities of dust particles of uncertain composition. Primary cosmic rays also travel through interstellar space, and magnetic fields extend across much of it. Most interstellar matter occurs in cloudlike concentrations, which can condense to form stars. Stars, in turn, continually lose mass through stellar winds (see solar wind). Supernovas and planetary nebulae also feed mass back to the interstellar medium, where it mixes with matter that has not yet formed stars (see Populations I and II).


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The 2002 images show hot spots, which represent places where the jets have slowed and given up energy as they crash into dense interstellar gas.
Favre is the greatest one-man show the league can offer, Warner is this unearthly being unleashing a Milky Way of luminous receivers and interstellar gas.
By examining this structure, astronomers can reconstruct the original distribution of interstellar gas and magnetic fields within each of the galaxies, Condon says.
 
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