Free Astronomy Magazine January-February 2026

20 JANUARY-FEBRUARY 2026 ASTRO PUBLISHING more than 100 times the area cov- ered by the full Moon—by observ- ing the radio spectral lines from atoms recombining, known as Car- bon Radio Recombination Lines (CRRLs). The team’s map covers the bustling Cygnus X region, a cosmic metropolis about 5,000 light-years away, that’s overflowing with new- born stars. “It’s like suddenly turn- ing on the lights in a room and seeing all sorts of structures we never knew were there,” says Kim- berly Emig, an associate scientist with the NSF National Radio As- tronomy Observatory (NSF NRAO), and lead author of the new study. The new map reveals a vast net- work of arcs, ridges, and webs of dark gas weaving through Cygnus X. These shapes show where star- making material is gathered and grown, before it becomes visible as before it becomes visible in CO as molecular clouds. The research demonstrates that these faint car- bon signals, detected at very low radio frequencies, are an incredibly powerful tool for uncovering the hidden gas that directly connects ordinary matter with the formation of new stars. The study discovered that this dark gas is not just sitting still; it’s flowing and shifting, and moving with velocities much higher than previously realized. These tur- bulent flows can shape how quickly stars can form. The team also found that the brightness of these carbon lines is directly linked to the intense starlight bathing the region, high- lighting the powerful role that ra- diation plays in galactic recycling. “By making the invisible visible, we can finally track how raw material in our galaxy is transformed from simple atoms into the complex mo- lecular structures that will one day become stars, planets, and possibly life,” Emig explains, “And this is just the beginning of understand- ing these previously unseen forces.” The NSF GBT has become the world’s premier tool for this kind of research, and even larger surveys of CRRLs (like the GBT Diffuse Ionized Gas Survey at Low Frequencies) are underway to explore other star- forming regions of the Milky Way. The insights gleaned here will help astronomers around the world model how our Galaxy—and poten- tially others—builds massive clouds for stars to form in. A n international team of as- tronomers has created the first-ever large-scale maps of a mysterious form of matter, known as CO-dark molecular gas, in one of our Milky Way Galaxy’s most ac- tive star-forming neighborhoods, Cygnus X. Their findings, using the U.S. National Science Foundation’s Green Bank Telescope (NSF GBT), are providing crucial new clues about how stars formed in the Milky Way. For decades, scientists have known that most new stars are born inside clouds of cold mo- lecular hydrogen gas. Much of this molecular hydrogen is invisible to most telescopes—it doesn’t give off light that can easily be detected. Traditionally, astronomers have hunted for these clouds by looking for carbon monoxide (CO), a mole- cule that acts like a flashing sign for star-building regions. However, it turns out there’s a lot of star-form- ing gas that doesn’t “light up” in CO. This dark, hidden material (called CO-dark molecular gas) has been one of astronomy’s biggest blind spots. Now, for the first time, astronomers have mapped this hid- den gas over a huge swath of sky— Astronomers map mysterious “dark” gas in the Milky Way by NRAO !