Astronomers from the University of Colorado at Boulder and the University of California at Berkeley have discovered a key building block for new stars in the rapidly expanding remains of an ancient stellar explosion.

Presented at the 197th meeting of the American Astronomical Society meeting June 3 to June 7 in Pasadena, Calif., the study provides insights into the early stages of a process by which violent stellar explosions help produce new stars. "This finding is important because it gives us an example of how a supernova explosion can create new clouds of star-forming material," said Brian Rachford, a postdoctoral researcher at CU-Boulder's Center for Astrophysics and Space Astronomy. Other participants in the study include Barry Welsh, a senior research scientist at UC-Berkeley's Space Sciences Laboratory and Jason Tumlinson, a doctoral student in CU-Boulder's astrophysical and planetary sciences department and a CASA research assistant. The Monoceros Loop Supernova Remnant under study resulted from the cataclysmic explosion of a star nearly 100,000 years ago some 5,000 light-years from Earth, said Rachford. The supernova has formed a shell of gas 350 light-years across that is still expanding at a rate of 100,000 miles per hour. One light-year -- the distance light travels through the universe in a year -- is equal to roughly 6 trillion miles. The astronomers detected the presence of molecular hydrogen gas in the rapidly moving shell using a spectrograph onboard NASA's Far Ultraviolet Spectrographic Explorer, or FUSE, satellite. The spectrograph breaks up the ultraviolet light in a manner similar to the way a prism breaks up sunlight into a spectrum of individual colors.