Question: What is the coolest picture that you have received from a radio telescope before?

Anna Scaife answered on 12 Nov 2014:

Hey Evie – the coolest picture… hmmm… I once made an image of a pre-stellar core (the big lump of dust and gas that goes on to form a star), which is *literally* cool, in fact it’s got a temperature of -263 degrees!

The prettiest picture was probably of an edge-brightened dark molecular cloud – these are the clouds of dust and (molecular) gas where stars form. Normally they’re just dark and cold, but if they are close enough to an already formed star then the photons from that stars start to ionise (break off electrons) from the molecular gas and in the radio it makes it look as if the edge of the cloud is glowing 🙂