Credit: NASA, ESA and Mohammad Heydari-Malayeri (Observatoire de Paris, France)

Fierce radiation from N11A’s central star is shaping a delicate rose in space in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope.

Explore the soft glow surrounding the massive star at the heart of the Rose Nebula in N11A. The sharp eyes of Hubble allow us and astronomers to study in detail the nebula, stars embedded in its heart, as well as the surrounding layers of hot gas and dust. Zoom into the huge star near the center of the nebula. The stars within this nebula are more than 10 times heavier than our Sun. Strong stellar winds from the newly-born suns have carved an opening in the gas and dust. Intense ultraviolet radiation causes the gas in the nebula to glow like a neon sign.

This nebula lies within a giant star–making factory in the Large Magellanic Cloud. The LMC, visible from the Southern Hemisphere, is a nearby dwarf galaxy to our Milky Way Galaxy about 150,000 light-years from Earth toward the constellation Dorado. Explore a larger piece of this beautiful corner of the universe.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, and The Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

A red flower blossoms in the southern constellation of Circinus in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. NGC 5315 is a planetary nebula.

Explore the image. Do you see any other patterns in the nebula?

The image clearly shows glowing gas ejected by the dying star. Planetary nebulae have nothing to do with planets. They do resemble planets when viewed through ground-based telescopes. Planetary nebulae are created when stars similar to the Sun cast off their outer shells of material into space during the last stages of their lives. These bubbles continue to expand into space. The white dwarf, glowing hot and bright in the center of the nebula, gives off intense ultraviolet radiation and sends out a strong solar wind. The ultraviolet radiation causes the gas cloud to glow. The stellar wind blowing from the central star within NGC 5315 has created a clear cavity at the center. Our Sun will not become a planetary nebula for another 4 billion to 5 billion years.

The X-shaped pattern in the outer layers of NGC 5315 show that gas was thrown out by the star in two directions. Scientists also believe that the star may be spinning as material is thrown away from the star.

NGC 5315 is about 7,000 light-years from Earth toward the southern constellation Circinus. This faint constellation was created by Nicholas de Lacaille during the mid 18th century. While the constellation has no ancient mythology, Lacaille described the shape as that of a drawing compass; one used to draw circles.

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NASA/JPL-Caltech/WISE Team

Flower-shaped nebula abound in the cosmos. This churning bud blossoms with new stars in a new infrared image from NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer. The stars, called the Berkeley 5 cluster, show as blue dots to the right of the image. They shine in the cloud from which they formed only about a million years ago.

Explore the image from WISE. From the Berkeley 59 cluster, notice the red glow surrounding the hot, new stars. This warm dust is the basis for the stars’ formation. A green ‘leafy’ nebulosity wraps the cluster showing the edge of this starry cocoon. The cloud glows green from the presence of heated polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, or PAHs. PAHs are molecules left over from combustion and we find these molecules on Earth in exhaust pipes and barbecue pits. Search the cloud for red blobs of light. These are second-generation stars forming near the edge of the cloud. The hot, blue stars in the center send out an intense solar wind, carving a hollow area within the cloud. As the gas and dust slam into the quieter space near the edges, it compresses, providing fuel for new stars. The cloud even contains a supernova remnant, NGC 7822. The massive star exploded, blasting the cloud open and leaving behind the floral look we now see. The hot, blue stars making up the Berkeley 5 cluster will likely explode as supernovae as well; in a few million years. The blue stars sprinkled throughout the image are foreground stars.

Berkeley 5 and NGC 7822 lie about 3,000 light-years from Earth toward the northern constellation Cepheus, the King.

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Credit: NASA/JPL/Caltech/Harvard-Smithsonian CfA

Bright, young stars form a rosebud-shaped nebula in this image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope known as NGC 7129. In this Valentine’s Day image, thousands of stars are being formed in this dense cloud of gas and dust. Most stars, including our Sun, are thought to have formed in such clouds. Spitzer’s infrared camera allows us to peer inside this cloud.

Explore this chaotic stellar nursery. Within the past million years, the new stars’ torrent of high-speed stellar winds have blown a bubble in the nebula, releasing them from their dusty cocoons. These stars also unleash searing ultraviolet radiation. This ultraviolet radiation heats and excites the cloud and causes it to glow with a rose-colored light. Astronomers believe that the reddish color comes from a rich source of hydrocarbons in the cloud. Below the petals of the nebula, three stars cause an area rich in carbon monoxide to glow green.

Not all stars are forming in the larger nebula. Two outlying, smaller nebula are also forming a few young stars.

NGC 7129 is located in the constellation of Cepheus, the King, about 3,000 light-years from Earth.

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Credit: European Southern Observatory (ESO)

Explore the folds and petals of the Orion Nebula in this dramatic new image from ESO’s VISTA survey telescope. VISTA’s infrared vision allows to deeply into this well-known nebula showing young active stars and regions of warm gas. As we peer through a telescope at the Orion Nebula, we see only a small part of the light streaming to us. The infrared sensors on NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and VISTA show a much larger complex of gas and dust, all material for new stars to form.

Explore the nebula. We see the familiar flower shaped form of the Orion Nebula and petal-shaped areas of gas surrounding the heart of the nebula. With a little imagination, we can easily see the 3D nature of the nebula with a ledge at the top and at the heart of the Great Nebula lie the four bright stars that form the Trapezium. These young, hot stars send out a strong solar wind that have hollowed out an area of the nebula. Scorching ultraviolet radiation causes the gas to glow. What is new in this image are the countless young stars that cannot be seen in visible light. These young stars, in many cases, are glowing through the clouds in which they formed. These stars also send streams of fast-moving gas screaming at 700,000 miles an hour into the surrounding cloud. Red globs of light show in the upper part of the image and seem to be associated with the collision of the young stars outflow and the peaceful nebula surrounding the new stars. Search also for background galaxies. A bright edge-on spiral can be seen to the right of the center area of the image.

The Orion Nebula, or M42, is one of the biggest star–making factories in the galaxy. And it’s pretty close; only about 1,350 light-years from Earth. The Great Nebula in Orion lies just below the Belt of Orion in the sword and is faintly visible as a glowing cloud of gray-green. French comet-hunter, Charles Messier sketched its main features in the mid eighteenth century and gave it the number 42 in his catalog. William Herschel guessed at the Orion Nebula’s true nature when he said it might be “the chaotic material of future suns.”

VISTA, short for Visible and Infrared Survey Telescope for Astronomy is the latest addition to ESO’s Paranal Observatory in Chile. It is the largest survey telescope in the world with a large, 4.1 meter mirror, wide field of view, and sensitive detectors.

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Credit: ESO/J. Emerson/VISTA.

What looks like a flame, or a cosmic jellyfish, is seen shooting out of the rich star–forming region of the Flame Nebula. Also known as NGC 2024, the Flame Nebula shows a bright group of stars lighting up the region with the core completely hidden behind a pillar of dust. Intense ultraviolet light and strong winds come from bright, new stars deep in the heart of the Flame Nebula. The ultraviolet light excites atoms inside the nebula causing it to glow. Usually we see great images like this from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. This image comes to us from the giant, 4.1-meter VISTA telescope, the world’s largest survey telescope.

Similar to the Great Nebula in Orion, the Flame Nebula is an emission nebula. And it’s found in the same part of the sky as the Orion Nebula. The bright star to the right is the blue supergiant Alnitak. Also known as Zeta Orionis, Alnitak is the left-most star, to northern hemisphere observers, in the belt of Orion.

Explore the image. Can you pick out the familiar Horsehead Nebula? You should be able to spot the ghostly outline of the very familiar reflection nebula in the lower left. It’s not how we usually see it. The image was taken in visible light to near-infrared. Near-infrared is just below what the human eye can see.

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Credit: NASA/JPL–Caltech/P.S. Teixeira (Center for Astrophysics)

Whether you see a Christmas tree or snowflake, this nebula represents winter. Trace the dim triangular pattern of the tree in the wisps of green and yellow. Or follow the pattern of a snowflake in the center group of stars in this Spitzer Space Telescope image of the Christmas Tree Nebula.

T.A. Rector (NRAO/AUI/NSF and NOAO/AURA/NSF) and B.A. Wolpa (NOAO/AURA/NSF)

The Christmas Tree cluster is a star–forming region about 2,700 light-years away toward the constellation of Monoceros, the unicorn. A light-year is the distance light travels in one year; a distance of about 10 trillion kilometers. In the middle of the image, this star-forming cloud appears to have regularly spaced stars. Astronomers believe that these are very young stars just born in their dusty cocoons. Eventually, these stars will move away from their birthplace and the snowflake will disappear. The yellowish dots in the cluster are huge baby stars.

Find the dusty finger pointing down from the top at the star cluster. This is the dark and dusty Cone Nebula. Spitzer helps astronomers explore the universe in infrared light. Infrared is a form of light that is just below what we can see with our eyes but we can feel it as heat. In the yellowish heart-shaped region near the top, Spitzer helps us see through the dust to reveal the youngest protostars in the cloud, just now beginning to glow as they join their crib-mates to become full-fledged stars.

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Credit: NASA, ESA, M. Robberto (Space Telescope Science Institute/ESA) and the Hubble Space Telescope Orion Treasury Project Team

The Great Nebula in Orion, shown in this image from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope, is a place of wonder. The nebula, also known as M42, shows flowers in gas, giant pillars of dust and massive stars. Strong winds from massive stars found in the center of the nebula carved out a great cavity in the nebula.

More than 3,000 stars of various sizes and brightnesses appear in this image. Look for the brightest part of the nebula. Zoom in on a group of four stars. Radiation from these stars, called the Trapezium, causes the gas of the nebula to glow showing us wispy patterns and dense dust lanes. Just below and to the right of the Trapezium, find a star with a “bow shock” around it. Like a boat in the water, gas and dust streaming away from the stars of the Trapezium flow around the star. How many other bow shocks around stars can you find?

Wander more to the right in the image and you can see arcs and bubbles formed when gas and dust carried by the solar winds smashed into cooler, denser material.

In the upper part of the image, you’ll find another nebula separated by a dense band of dust. A massive star lights up this region, known as M43. Astronomers call this a miniature Orion Nebula.

The Orion Nebula is a stellar nursery where stars are born. Some objects in the nebula came close to becoming stars but didn’t quite make it. In this image, The Hubble Space Telescope shows a glimpse of possible brown dwarf stars. Brown dwarfs are failed stars that didn’t have enough mass and fuel to cause them to ignite. These cool objects are too small and cannot sustain nuclear fusion in their cores the way our Sun does. Fusion is the power source of all stars. Astronomers used this image to see for the first time binary brown dwarfs; two brown dwarfs orbiting each other.

The nebula, clearly visible in winter skies just below the three stars that make up the Belt of Orion, is only about 1,500 light years from Earth. It offers astronomers a great place in which to study how stars are born.

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