The area shown on this image is known as the Polaris Flare, a region of dust and gas in the constellation of Ursa Minor, 490 light-years from Earth. It was taken by ESA's Herschel infrared space observatory and displayed as a colour composite. It shows several tangled interstellar filaments, which stretch for tens of light-years through space. Embedded within the filaments are denser patches of material, which in the future might become stars. Federrath and is colleagues compared the properties of these filaments and those in other molecular cloud regions to their simulations and found very good agreement. (Source: ESA and the SPIRE & PACS consortia, Ph. André (CEA Saclay) for the Gould's Belt Survey Key Programme Consortium, and A. Abergel (IAS Orsay) for the Evolution of Interstellar Dust Key Programme Consortium)
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